But shrinking may affect your database performance significantly, if not properly done. Shrinking will increase fragmentation and will cause any DB operation costly. Rebuild indexes is necessary after DB shrink to reduce fragmentation and increase performance.

Does database size affect performance?

The amount of data stored in a database has a great impact on its performance. It is usually accepted that a query becomes slower with additional data in the database.

What will happen if we shrink the database?

What Happens when you Shrink a Database? When you shrink a database, you are asking SQL Server to remove the unused space from your database's files. The process SQL uses can be ugly and result in Index fragmentation. This fragmentation affects performance in the long run.