is SELECT COUNT(*) expensive?

Question

Do you think it\'s a good idea to count entries from a really big table (like 50K rows) on each page load?

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM table

Right

Answer 1

COUNT(*) isnt an expensive operation, it dosent actually return the data just looks at the indexes. You should be fine even on a 50k table.

If you experience issues in loading it would be simple to retractor and optimise at that that point.