Optimizing API Performance: 2 Minutes to 30 Seconds

The Problem

The Nigerian travel market needed a real-time flight scraper for 12 airlines. The original application took over 2 minutes to return results, making it unusable for users.

The Challenge

• Cloudflare and CAPTCHA challenges on multiple airline sites
• Real-time price fetching with no caching allowed
• High CPU and memory load on the server
• 12 different airline APIs and scraping targets
• Unpredictable response times from external services

The Solution

I rebuilt the scraper with intelligent route filtering and progressive result loading. The system now returns results in 30-45 seconds while reducing CPU and memory load by over 70%.

Key Optimizations

• Intelligent Route Filtering: Only process routes that match user criteria
• Progressive Result Loading: Show results as they become available
• Cloudflare Bypass: Implemented advanced techniques to handle anti-bot measures
• CAPTCHA Handling: Automated CAPTCHA solving for supported services
• Desktop Companion App: Built with Electron for local processing

Results

• Response time: 2+ minutes → 30-45 seconds (75% faster)
• 9 of 12 airlines live in production
• Desktop companion application shipped to clients
• VPS deployment with dedicated domain
• Reduced server costs by 40%

# Before optimization
2 minutes 15 seconds average response
70% CPU usage

# After optimization
32 seconds average response
20% CPU usage

Key Takeaway

Sometimes the best optimization is rethinking the architecture, not just tweaking the code. The progressive loading pattern made the biggest difference in perceived performance.