iFood Relies on ScyllaDB to Deliver Over 100 Million Events a Month to Restaurants

Brazil's leading food delivery service, iFood, which dominates 86% of the market and operates in several Latin American countries, leverages ScyllaDB to efficiently manage over 100 million monthly events from restaurant orders. Initially utilizing Amazon DynamoDB, iFood transitioned to ScyllaDB to address challenges with DynamoDB's autoscaling limitations during peak demand times and its higher costs. The migration to ScyllaDB, facilitated by its compatibility with existing query models, resulted in significant cost savings—reducing database expenses from $54,000 to $6,000 annually for one service—and improved performance, notably decreasing event handling times from 80ms to 3ms. iFood's infrastructure on AWS uses various services like Amazon SNS and SQS, and the shift to ScyllaDB also allowed for more effective event processing and reduced code complexity by 40%. Despite minor challenges, such as managing TTLs and understanding ScyllaDB's collection updates, the transition proved advantageous, offering scalable, reliable solutions amidst surging demand, particularly during the COVID-19 crisis, when iFood also expanded support for its delivery partners and restaurant network.