Alexander Ioffe: How Fast Are Postgres 19 Graph Queries? Part 1: What Are They Actually Doing?

Postgres 19 adds SQL/PGQ graph queries. Measured against a PostgreSQL 19beta1 build, the fixed-depth graph query compiles to the exact same plan as a hand-written join, and the variable-depth traversal that graph databases were built for still falls to a recursive CTE. Apache AGE runs the same indexed traversal under a Cypher wrapper. Numbers from ExoBench in local mode.