Adalo X-Ray

In July, 2025 we released a new performance auditing tool called Adalo X-Ray. X-Ray can help Makers identify potential bottlenecks in their apps by analyzing issues which the Adalo team has determined to be problematic but which may not always be apparent to app builders.

Bottlenecks Identified by X-Ray

At present X-Ray analyzes the following application characteristics

Nested Lists

Unnecessary use of nested lists is probably the #1 performance mistake we see in Adalo apps, because they both increase screen complexity and increase database query load. If you are finding that screens with nested lists are not performant, consider breaking the screen into smaller subscreens.

If X-Ray finds one or more nested lists in a screen, you can click the notification to be taken directly to the screen.

Screen Complexity

While we can't point directly to a specific number as being "too many" when it comes to the number of components appearing on a screen, it's fair to say that as the component count increases, performance decreases. There are many reasons for this, but most notably it is because more components often means more actions which often means more logic which often means more database calls, and so forth. The goal of this X-Ray feature is to present those screens which contain an unusually high number of components in an effort to help the Maker consider which screens are candidates for breaking into multiple sub-screens.

Orphaned Screens

It is not at all unusual for us to review Adalo apps that consist of more than 500 screens. You read that right. More than 500 hundred. In many cases, these apps have gone through many iterations, and the Maker has often built screen drafts which aren't actually part of the app. You can see them in the Builder canvas, but they aren't connected to the larger application in any way. These are known as orphaned screens, similar to the concept of an orphaned database record which is no longer associated with the larger record body. Orphaned screens do not by themselves affect application performance because after all they are not being used, however they do unnecessarily increase the application bundle size and also clutter up the Builder canvas, and so we thought it useful to identify them here for potential removal.

Database Tables

It's a little known fact that every single Adalo app is backed by a standalone PostgreSQL database. Because of this, our team is presently managing more than 2.5 million PostgreSQL databases! In short, we do a lot of work to maintain these databases and ensure they're optimized, including automatically indexing tables (Collections, in Adalo-speak).

Even so, we thought it might be useful to include some information about the analyzed app's underlying database. In this section you'll find metrics pertaining to total row count, table count, and relative table size.

Although we automatically optimize all app databases in real-time, Makers managing apps having one or more tables containing greater than 10,000 records will see an option to request a custom audit by our team.

Cache Hit Ratios

We're admittedly moving into wonkish territory here, but for the benefit of fellow database nerds we thought it would be useful to include information about table and index cache hit ratios. These ratios pertain to how much of the queried data is made immediately available thanks to being loaded into the database server's working memory (RAM). Anything higher than 95% is going to be great in terms of database performance and in our observations most Adalo applications will see numbers approaching 100%.

Lottie Files

Lottie files are great because they provide a convenient way to create vector-based (scalable) animations that can really add polish to an app. That said, they are slow and over time can consume enormous amounts of bandwidth. So slow that we urge you be very judicious and strategic in terms of adding them to your apps.

To help you quickly identify which screens contain Lottie files you'll find a section under the Screen Complexity tab which contains a list.

Accessing X-Ray

At the time of this writing X-Ray is being progressively rolled out to all Makers. If your account is part of the rollout you'll be able to access it in the Builder menubar:

Clicking this icon will open a panel introducing you to X-Ray and inviting you to begin an audit:

In most cases the audit will run instantaneously. Once complete you'll be able to click into each section to learn more about the results:

Frequently Asked Questions