ONE ROUND TRIP BEATS A THOUSAND, AND YOUR BATCH API PROBABLY IS NOT BATCHING

Summary from the TLDR Data newsletter

A 100,000-row Postgres load took 41 minutes because each row became its own statement and transaction; COPY cut the same work to 11 seconds. Real batching removes network round trips, parse overhead, and WAL flush barriers, while driver flags and transaction chunking prevent bulk APIs from silently behaving row by row.