I have published this over here too, I'll delete whichever one is not appropriate.
microsoft/azure-pipelines-agent#1480

I am using VSTS with the hosted agent.

Artifact publishing is very slow. Cloning the repo, which is much larger than the artifacts that need publishing takes about 3-4 mins. Publishing the artifacts is taking 23 minutes.

Here are the details:

• 23k files in the final artifacts that need publishing
• I've seen that people suggest zipping it up, then publishing. We have tried this before, but the zipping process takes longer than the publishing. Then I also need to unzip them in the release process.
• I am publishing to the Server, not to a file share.
• I am using a hosted agent.

I've read on some forums that it takes a long time because it only does 4 files at a time.

Is there any way to speed this up?