🚀 GraphQL Server Performance Showdown

Overview

This project provides a comprehensive performance comparison between three widely-used Node.js GraphQL server implementations:

• ⚡ Fastify + Mercurius
• 🚅 Fastify + Apollo
• 🚂 Express + Apollo

🏃‍ Quick Start

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/mypolat/fastify-mercurius_vs_fastify-apollo_vs_express-apollo
cd fastify-mercurius_vs_fastify-apollo_vs_express-apollo

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Build the project
npm run build

# Start all servers
npm run start:all

# Run benchmark tests
npm run test:all

📊 Performance Comparison

Response Time Analysis

Framework	Best	Average	Worst	Recommended Use Case
Fastify + Mercurius	~0.6ms	~0.7ms	~1ms	High-performance APIs requiring minimal latency
Fastify + Apollo	~4.8ms	~5.1ms	~14ms	Balance between features and performance
Express + Apollo	~5.3ms	~15-40ms	~42ms	Existing Express.js applications

🎯 Key Findings

Fastify + Mercurius

• ✨ Best overall performance
• ⚡ Most consistent response times
• 🔥 Minimal performance degradation under load
• 👍 Recommended for high-performance GraphQL APIs
• ⚠️ Limited ecosystem compared to Apollo

Fastify + Apollo

• ✅ Good balance of performance and features
• ⚡ ~7x slower than Mercurius
• 🔥 ~3x faster than Express+Apollo
• 👍 Rich Apollo ecosystem available
• 📈 Excellent monitoring capabilities

Express + Apollo

• ✅ Most widely adopted combination
• ⚠️ Higher response times
• ⚠️ Significant performance variance
• 🔄 Mature ecosystem
• 📚 Extensive documentation and community support

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