The only scalable delete in Postgres is DROP TABLE — PlanetScale

▤ Summary

This article explains why large DELETE operations in Postgres create bloat, replication overhead, and extra work for readers and autovacuum. It argues that DROP TABLE and TRUNCATE scale better because they remove data at the metadata and filesystem level instead of creating dead tuples. It also shows practical ways to reshape cleanup workflows, including partitioning, batched deletes, and table-swap techniques. The post uses a real internal example of a junk-data bug to illustrate how to recover efficiently from large-scale data cleanup problems.

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