StackShareStackShare
Follow on
StackShare

Discover and share technology stacks from companies around the world.

Follow on

© 2025 StackShare. All rights reserved.

Product

  • Stacks
  • Tools
  • Feed

Company

  • About
  • Contact

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Languages
  4. Query Languages
  5. GraphQL vs Graphene

GraphQL vs Graphene

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

GraphQL
GraphQL
Stacks34.9K
Followers28.1K
Votes309
Graphene
Graphene
Stacks96
Followers142
Votes1
GitHub Stars8.2K
Forks819

GraphQL vs Graphene: What are the differences?

Introduction

Here, we will discuss the key differences between GraphQL and Graphene in the context of web development.

  1. Schema Definition Language (SDL): GraphQL uses Schema Definition Language (SDL) to define the structure of the API. It allows developers to create a typed schema that outlines the available queries, mutations, and subscriptions. On the other hand, Graphene is a Python library that provides an easy way to build GraphQL schemas and resolvers. It allows developers to define types, mutations, and queries using Python classes.

  2. Libraries and Ecosystem: GraphQL is a query language that is implemented in many languages other than Python, such as JavaScript, Ruby, and Go. It has a large and active community that provides various tools and libraries to support GraphQL development in different platforms. Graphene, on the other hand, is a Python library specifically designed for building GraphQL APIs in Python. It provides a range of features and integrations that are tailored to the Python ecosystem, making it a convenient choice for Python developers.

  3. Flexibility and Customization: GraphQL allows clients to request exactly the data they need, enabling them to reduce the amount of data transferred over the network and improve performance. It provides a flexible and efficient way to retrieve data by allowing clients to specify the fields they want to fetch in the query. Graphene, as a Python library, allows developers to customize the GraphQL schema and resolvers according to their specific requirements. It provides a high level of control and flexibility in building APIs.

  4. Integrations and Compatibility: GraphQL can be seamlessly integrated with existing APIs and databases. It works well with different data sources and can aggregate data from multiple services into a single API endpoint. GraphQL is also compatible with RESTful APIs, allowing developers to gradually migrate from REST to GraphQL. Graphene, being a Python library, can be integrated with popular Python frameworks, such as Django and Flask, making it easy to add GraphQL support to existing projects.

  5. Developer Experience and Tooling: GraphQL provides a powerful developer experience with various tools and libraries available for clients and servers. It has a rich ecosystem of tools for code generation, documentation, testing, and debugging. Graphene, as a Python library, provides a developer-friendly environment for building GraphQL APIs in Python. It offers features like automatic code generation, a built-in GraphQL IDE, and support for introspection and schema validation.

  6. Performance and Caching: GraphQL provides advantages in terms of performance and caching. It allows clients to specify the exact data they need, reducing the amount of data transferred over the network. The flexible nature of GraphQL queries also enables efficient batching and parallel execution of queries. Moreover, GraphQL clients can cache the responses at different levels, improving overall performance. Graphene, being a Python library, provides performance optimizations specific to the Python ecosystem, such as integration with popular caching libraries like Redis.

In summary, GraphQL and Graphene differ in their approach to defining schemas, their libraries and ecosystems, flexibility and customization options, integrations and compatibility, developer experience and tooling, as well as performance and caching capabilities.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs
CLI (Node.js)
or
Manual

Advice on GraphQL, Graphene

Raj
Raj

Oct 10, 2020

Review

It purely depends on your app needs. Does it need to be scalable, do you have lots of features, OR it is a simple project with very simple needs - many of those parameters clarify which technologies will fit.

If you are looking for a quick solution, that reduces lot of development time, take a look at postgraphile (https://www.graphile.org/postgraphile/). You have to just define the schema and you get the entire graph-ql apis built for you and you can just focus on your frontend.

On frontend, React is good, but also need to remember that it is popular because it introduced one way data writes and in-built virtual dom + diffing to determine which dom to modify. Though personally I liked it, am recently more inclined to Svelte because its lightweightedness and absence of virtual dom and its simplicity compared to the huge ecosystem that React has surrounded itself with.

In all situations, frameworks keep changing over time. What is best today is not considered even good few years from now. What is important is to have the logic in a separate, clean manner void of too many framework related dependencies - that way you can switch one framework with another very easily.

3.76k views3.76k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

GraphQL
GraphQL
Graphene
Graphene

GraphQL is a data query language and runtime designed and used at Facebook to request and deliver data to mobile and web apps since 2012.

Graphene is a Python library for building GraphQL schemas/types fast and easily.

Hierarchical;Product-centric;Client-specified queries;Backwards Compatible;Structured, Arbitrary Code;Application-Layer Protocol;Strongly-typed;Introspective
Easy to use: Graphene helps you use GraphQL in Python without effort.;Relay: Graphene has builtin support for Relay;Django: Automatic Django model mapping to Graphene Types. Check a fully working Django implementation
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
8.2K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
819
Stacks
34.9K
Stacks
96
Followers
28.1K
Followers
142
Votes
309
Votes
1
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 75
    Schemas defined by the requests made by the user
  • 63
    Will replace RESTful interfaces
  • 62
    The future of API's
  • 49
    The future of databases
  • 12
    Get many resources in a single request
Cons
  • 4
    Hard to migrate from GraphQL to another technology
  • 4
    More code to type.
  • 2
    Takes longer to build compared to schemaless.
  • 1
    Works just like any other API at runtime
  • 1
    All the pros sound like NFT pitches
Pros
  • 0
    Will replace RESTful interfaces
  • 0
    The future of API's
Integrations
No integrations available
Django
Django
Python
Python
Relay Framework
Relay Framework

What are some alternatives to GraphQL, Graphene?

Prisma

Prisma

Prisma is an open-source database toolkit. It replaces traditional ORMs and makes database access easy with an auto-generated query builder for TypeScript & Node.js.

PostGraphile

PostGraphile

Execute one command (or mount one Node.js middleware) and get an instant high-performance GraphQL API for your PostgreSQL database

OData

OData

It is an ISO/IEC approved, OASIS standard that defines a set of best practices for building and consuming RESTful APIs. It helps you focus on your business logic while building RESTful APIs without having to worry about the various approaches to define request and response headers, status codes, HTTP methods, URL conventions, media types, payload formats, query options, etc.

Oracle PL/SQL

Oracle PL/SQL

It is a powerful, yet straightforward database programming language. It is easy to both write and read, and comes packed with lots of out-of-the-box optimizations and security features.

SQL

SQL

SQL is designed for managing data held in a relational database management system (RDBMS), or for stream processing in a relational data stream management system (RDSMS).

JSON API

JSON API

It is most widely used data format for data interchange on the web. This data interchange can happen between two computers applications at different geographical locations or running within same hardware machine.

graphql.js

graphql.js

Lightest GraphQL client with intelligent features. You can download graphql.js directly, or you can use Bower or NPM.

JsonAPI

JsonAPI

t is a format that works with HTTP. A main goal of the specification is to optimize HTTP requests both in terms of the number of requests and the size of data packages exchanged between clients and servers.

GraphQL Ruby

GraphQL Ruby

Get going fast with the graphql gem, battle-tested and trusted by GitHub and Shopify.

Trino

Trino

It is a fast distributed SQL query engine for big data analytics that helps you explore your data universe. It is designed to query large data sets distributed over one or more heterogeneous data sources.

Related Comparisons

Bootstrap
Materialize

Bootstrap vs Materialize

Laravel
Django

Django vs Laravel vs Node.js

Bootstrap
Foundation

Bootstrap vs Foundation vs Material UI

Node.js
Spring Boot

Node.js vs Spring-Boot

Liquibase
Flyway

Flyway vs Liquibase