HTML Size

jqGrid for ASP.NET uses optimized client-side rendering, meaning that the HTML size of the grid is minimal. In fact, the only HTML the grid renders is the table and pager placeholders, e.g. a typical grid setup will look like this:

<table id="JQGrid1"></table>
<div id="JQGrid1_Pager"></div>

No matter how many rows/cells are displayed, this is the only thing that will be sent from server to client. Compared to that, competitor products and built-in Microsoft products sometimes render hundreds of KBs of HTML even for simple grids.

ViewState Size

jqGrid for ASP.NET was designed in a way that tries to restrict ViewState usage as much as possible. Competitor products and built-in Microsoft products store the datasource in ViewState by default, which may result huge ViewState size even for simple grids.

jqGrid stores only a minimal ammount of property information in ViewState and uses AJAX to retrieve data, as opposed to ViewState.