[debaserab2]

> which by definition will be at least as large as static HTML for the same content

Not really by definition - tables rendered on the server side are a good example of a payload that can easily be larger than template + dataset.

[acdha]

Transfer compression will usually take that down to the point where it's negligible. By the time you're talking enough data for this to matter, things like pagination will likely be far more important.