Case Study: The COVID Tracking Project scales to 2M API requests with Netlify

How The COVID Tracking Project Scaled From 0 to 2M API Requests in 3 Months

The COVID Tracking Project, created by Erin Kissane and volunteers at The Atlantic, needed a fast, reliable way to turn manually collected COVID-19 testing data into a public-facing resource as traffic surged during the pandemic. With the CDC not sharing key testing data, the team turned to Netlify to help build a resilient site alongside tools like Google Sheets, Contentful, and Gatsby.

Netlify powered the project’s Jamstack deployment and CDN, allowing the site to scale quickly and stay responsive even as major news outlets and the White House cited its data. The result was a platform that handled millions of unique visitors, over 1.4 million pageviews in a single day, and more than 2 million API requests daily without noticeable strain.

The COVID Tracking Project

Erin Kissane

Managing Editor