Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Apollo Engine VS Hasura

Compare Apollo Engine VS Hasura and see what are their differences

Apollo Engine logo Apollo Engine

Unlock the full power of GraphQL

Hasura logo Hasura

Hasura is an open platform to build scalable app backends, offering a built-in database, search, user-management and more.
  • Apollo Engine Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-25
  • Hasura Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-21

Apollo Engine features and specs

  • Performance Monitoring
    Apollo Engine provides real-time performance metrics for GraphQL queries, helping developers identify and optimize slow queries, which can significantly enhance application performance.
  • Error Tracking
    Apollo Engine offers comprehensive error tracking, allowing developers to quickly identify, diagnose, and resolve issues in their GraphQL APIs.
  • Caching
    It offers built-in caching capabilities, which can reduce the load on your servers and improve data retrieval times for clients by caching responses to frequent queries.
  • Schema Management
    Apollo Engine provides tools for managing and tracking changes to GraphQL schemas, ensuring smooth and collaborative development workflows.
  • Insights and Analytics
    Developers can access insights and analytics about query usage patterns, which helps in understanding how APIs are being used and where optimizations are needed.

Possible disadvantages of Apollo Engine

  • Cost
    While Apollo Engine offers a powerful suite of features, it may become expensive for large teams or projects, especially when advanced features are required.
  • Complexity
    Integrating Apollo Engine into an existing infrastructure can be complex, requiring a learning curve for teams unfamiliar with its components and setup procedures.
  • Vendor Lock-in
    Relying heavily on Apollo's ecosystem can lead to vendor lock-in, which might restrict flexibility if you want to switch to different solutions in the future.
  • Overhead
    Although useful, the additional monitoring and tracking capabilities can introduce overhead to your application, which may not be suitable for all environments.
  • Privacy Concerns
    Storing and analyzing query data with Apollo Engine could raise privacy concerns, especially for applications dealing with sensitive data.

Hasura features and specs

  • Real-Time Data
    Hasura provides built-in support for GraphQL subscriptions, allowing you to easily implement real-time data updates in your applications.
  • Auto-Generated APIs
    With Hasura, you can instantly generate a fully-functional, scalable GraphQL API from your existing databases without writing any code.
  • Authorization and Authentication
    Hasura provides granular authorization controls and integrates well with various authentication services, helping to secure your data access.
  • Microservices & Event Triggers
    Hasura allows you to create event-driven architectures by allowing you to trigger webhooks based on specified database events.
  • Scalability
    Designed for performance, Hasura can handle large-scale applications by optimizing database queries and offering load-balancing capabilities.
  • Multi-Data Source Support
    Hasura can connect to multiple data sources and databases, making it a versatile choice for complex architectures.
  • Developer Productivity
    The tool significantly reduces the time required for backend development, allowing developers to focus on building frontend features and improving user experience.
  • Community and Support
    Hasura has a growing community and offers comprehensive documentation, which can be invaluable for troubleshooting and getting the most out of the platform.

Possible disadvantages of Hasura

  • Complex Initial Setup
    Although Hasura simplifies many tasks, setting it up initially can be complex and may require a good understanding of both GraphQL and your underlying database.
  • Vendor Lock-In Concerns
    Depending heavily on Hasura can create vendor lock-in situations, making it difficult to switch technologies later without significant redevelopment effort.
  • Learning Curve
    Developers unfamiliar with GraphQL, event-driven architectures, or advanced database concepts may face a steep learning curve when adopting Hasura.
  • Limited Customization
    Some advanced use cases may require lower-level customizations not easily achievable through Hasuraโ€™s auto-generated APIs.
  • Performance Overhead
    Although optimized for performance, the additional layer Hasura introduces can still introduce latency, especially in highly complex queries.
  • Debugging Complexity
    Diagnosing issues can sometimes be complicated due to the number of components involved, including the database, Hasura, and the generated APIs.
  • Cost
    While Hasura offers a free tier, advanced features and enterprise-level support come at a cost, which can add up as your project scales.

Apollo Engine videos

I Asked An Actual Apollo Engineer to Explain the Saturn 5 Rocket - Smarter Every Day 280

Hasura videos

Scott Tries Hasura - A Realtime GraphQL API Builder

More videos:

  • Review - Evaluating Hasura
  • Review - The founder of Hasura teaching me about Hasura - FUN!

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Apollo Engine and Hasura)
Developer Tools
18 18%
82% 82
GraphQL
11 11%
89% 89
APIs
30 30%
70% 70
API Tools
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Hasura seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 123 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Apollo Engine mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Apollo Engine yet. Tracking of Apollo Engine recommendations started around Mar 2021.

Hasura mentions (123)

  • Boring on Purpose: Bold Moves in Internal Tooling
    A few years back, I decided to replace our spreadsheet-based host and service registries with a proper, Web-based asset registry. It took us a few days to hack together a simple system that we could use to track our infrastructure elements. It was not a big project -- just a simple app backed by a database, Hasura, and a React frontend. Since we were already using OpenID for authentication, it was easy for our... - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Supabase Alternatives ๐Ÿ”„ in 2025 ๐Ÿ˜ผ
    Hasura is a neck-to-neck competitor to Supabase as a BaaS, but with a crucial difference: its GraphQL-first approach. Unlike Supabase, Hasura doesn't bundle database services, allowing it to work with virtually any database including Supabase's own Postgres, Neon, and others. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Automatically Generate REST and GraphQL APIs From Your Database
    Hasura and PostGraphile lead the PostgreSQL GraphQL landscape. Hasura provides real-time subscriptions and a powerful permissions system, while PostGraphile offers deep PostgreSQL integration and excellent performance for complex queries. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • The Myth of GraphQL
    Here is an example data schema we get for a query using Hasura and GraphQL-Codegen. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • Hasura CLI on NixOS: A Working Solution
    Hasura is a great tool. I was worried about a few things such as huge RAM consumption, excessive focus on new features and functions despite many outstanding issues, long time rewrite of the server in Rust, etc... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Apollo Engine and Hasura, you can also consider the following products

GraphQL Hive - Open Source GraphQL Federation Platform

Supabase - An open source Firebase alternative

Grafbase - Unify the data layer with GraphQL

GraphQl Editor - Editor for GraphQL that lets you draw GraphQL schemas using visual nodes

How to GraphQL - Open-source tutorial website to learn GraphQL development

GraphQL Playground - GraphQL IDE for better development workflows