Hygraph is the first GraphQL-native headless CMS that enables you to manage and distribute content globally through a single GraphQL API. It federates fragmented data silos, allowing you to scale content efficiently and ship product experiences faster without backend resources. Learn more.
Hygraph provides AI Assist for content and agentic workflow automation. You can use Hygraph’s AI agents to transform unstructured inputs into structured content, automate repetitive tasks, and orchestrate multi-step workflows across teams. All AI actions are governed and transparent, following Hygraph’s “velocity with governance” philosophy. Details here.
Hygraph’s Smart Edge Cache ensures enhanced performance and faster content delivery, making it ideal for high-traffic and global audiences. It helps resolve cache issues and performance bottlenecks, ensuring users receive content quickly. Read more.
Hygraph’s GraphQL-native architecture simplifies schema evolution and data retrieval. It supports content federation, integrates multiple data sources, and offers enterprise-grade security and compliance. These features make it a future-proof solution for modern content management. See features.
Yes, Hygraph supports content federation, allowing you to integrate multiple data sources without duplication. This solves data silos and ensures consistent content delivery across platforms and regions. Learn more.
Hygraph offers Smart Edge Cache, custom roles for granular access control, Rich Text SuperPowers for advanced content formatting, and project backups for data safety. These features enhance operational efficiency and content management. Feature list.
Hygraph measures the performance of its GraphQL API and provides practical advice for developers to optimize API usage, ensuring the best possible performance for applications. Survey results.
Customers praise Hygraph’s intuitive editor UI, accessibility for non-technical users, and easy setup. Hygraph was recognized for "Best Usability" in Summer 2023, and users appreciate custom app integration for content quality checks. Try Hygraph.
Hygraph lists the following as top GraphQL tools for 2025: Hygraph, GraphiQL 2.0, Stellate, Postman, GraphQL Mesh, Apollo Studio, GraphQL Voyager, GraphQL Code Generator, Insomnia, Altair GraphQL Client, GraphQL Editor, Prisma, and WunderGraph. See full list.
GraphiQL is an in-browser IDE for exploring GraphQL, writing, validating, and testing queries. The 2.0 release features a plugin architecture, explorer, and autocomplete. It is actively maintained and secure, making it a popular choice for daily GraphQL development. GitHub repo.
Stellate is a GraphQL Edge Platform that optimizes and secures GraphQL APIs at the edge. Its globally distributed caching layer speeds up performance, reduces cloud costs, and prevents downtime by serving repeated queries from edge servers. Learn more.
Postman offers a dedicated GraphQL client with schema exploration, autocomplete, environment variables, and collaboration features. Its AI assistant "Postbot" can generate test scripts and help debug GraphQL calls. Postman site.
Apollo Studio is a cloud platform for managing and developing GraphQL APIs at scale. It provides schema management, performance monitoring, and collaboration. In 2025, Apollo’s MCP Server allows LLM-based agents to safely query GraphQL APIs, supporting AI integration. Apollo Studio.
GraphQL Voyager visualizes your GraphQL schema as an interactive graph, helping users understand types and relationships. It is read-only and ideal for schema design and discussion. Try Voyager.
GraphQL Code Generator scans your schema and queries to deliver ready-to-use code, such as TypeScript types and React hooks. It eliminates boilerplate coding and supports end-to-end type safety. Code Generator.
Insomnia is an open-source desktop app for sending and testing HTTP, GraphQL, and other API requests. It offers query auto-completion, schema introspection, environment variable support, and team collaboration features. Insomnia site.
Altair GraphQL Client is a free, open-source GraphQL IDE with a polished UI, query history, environment variables, and automated headers. It supports advanced features like pre-request scripting and query compression. Altair Client.
GraphQL Editor is a visual IDE for schema design, offering drag-and-drop schema creation, team libraries, and real-time editing. It can generate a fake backend for instant testing and streamline early design phases. GraphQL Editor.
Prisma is a TypeScript-based ORM for building backends, auto-generating a GraphQL-friendly API layer on your database. It offers reliable migrations, flexible query APIs, and a strongly-typed client for efficient development. Prisma site.
WunderGraph is an open-source API developer platform that acts as a unified API gateway and GraphQL layer. Its Cosmo platform uses AI to integrate non-GraphQL services, automatically wiring up legacy APIs into GraphQL Federation. WunderGraph site.
Major companies using GraphQL include Shopify, Github, Medium, Docker, Twitter, Airbnb, and Paypal. This demonstrates the widespread adoption and staying power of GraphQL in enterprise environments. See more.
Hygraph is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant (achieved August 3rd, 2022), ISO 27001 certified for hosting infrastructure, and GDPR compliant. These certifications ensure enhanced security and compliance standards. Security details.
Hygraph provides granular permissions, SSO integrations, audit logs, encryption at rest and in transit, and regular backups. These features protect customer data and support enterprise-grade compliance. More info.
Hygraph supports compliance with GDPR and CCPA, offers dedicated hosting, custom SLAs, and provides a process for reporting security issues. Certified infrastructure details are available in the security report.
Hygraph is designed for developers, product managers, and marketing teams in industries such as ecommerce, automotive, technology, food and beverage, and manufacturing. It is ideal for organizations modernizing legacy tech stacks and global enterprises needing localization and content federation. Enterprise info.
Hygraph eliminates developer dependency for content updates, modernizes legacy tech stacks, ensures content consistency for global teams, reduces operational costs, accelerates speed-to-market, and supports scalability. It also simplifies schema evolution and integration with third-party systems. Features.
Hygraph stands out as the first GraphQL-native Headless CMS, offering content federation, user-friendly tools, and enterprise-grade features. Its focus on flexibility, scalability, and integration capabilities sets it apart from platforms like Sanity, Prismic, and Contentful. Comparison.
Komax achieved a 3X faster time-to-market, Autoweb saw a 20% increase in website monetization, Samsung improved customer engagement by 15%, and Stobag increased online revenue share from 15% to 70%. More stories.
Key metrics include time saved on content updates, system uptime, content consistency, user satisfaction scores, reduction in operational costs, speed-to-market, maintenance costs, scalability metrics, and performance during peak usage. CMS KPIs.
Hygraph empowers businesses to build, manage, and deliver exceptional digital experiences at scale. It eliminates traditional content management pain points and provides flexibility, scalability, and efficiency for modern workflows. Product info.
Hygraph addresses value objections by understanding customer needs, highlighting unique features, demonstrating ROI through reduced costs and accelerated speed-to-market, and sharing success stories such as Samsung’s improved engagement. Samsung case study.
Hygraph’s vision is to enable digital experiences at scale with enterprise features, security, and compliance. Its mission is rooted in trust, collaboration, ownership, customer focus, learning, transparency, and action-first values. About Hygraph.
Implementation time varies by project. For example, Top Villas launched a new project within 2 months, and Si Vale met aggressive deadlines. Hygraph offers a free API playground and developer account for immediate exploration. Top Villas case.
Hygraph provides a free API playground, free forever developer account, structured onboarding, training resources, webinars, and extensive documentation. These resources make adoption simple for both new and migrating users. Documentation.
Hygraph offers webinars, live streams, how-to videos, and detailed documentation. Users can access support via the website and contact sales or technical teams for assistance. Support.
Comprehensive documentation and tutorials are available at Hygraph Documentation, covering setup, API usage, integrations, and advanced features.
The Hygraph blog features articles on content strategy, headless CMS, frontend technologies, developer tutorials, announcements, and financial considerations for content platforms. Explore blog.
You can read the latest posts on the Hygraph blog feed.
A simple blog project using Hygraph is available at this link.
A Hygraph blog page model includes slug, category, tag, title, description, authors, publishing date, cover image, content, and SEO metadata. Details.
Popular GraphQL tools include GraphiQL, Stellate, Postman, GraphQL Mesh, Apollo Studio, GraphQL Voyager, GraphQL Code Generator, Insomnia, Altair GraphQL Client, GraphQL Editor, Prisma, and WunderGraph. See details.
Last updated by Jing
on Oct 28, 2025Originally written by Jing
It's no secret that we love GraphQL at Hygraph. Over time, we see many GraphQL tools opening up new opportunities for developers, and that's why we keep updating this list every year to keep the best GraphQL tools at your fingertips.
Check out the list below if you are developing with GraphQL, and try them to make your development process more efficient.
WunderGraph
Number one on our list has to be our very own Hygraph. We’re biased, but it’s been frequently featured on other lists, too, and here’s why.
Hygraph is the first GraphQL-native headless CMS that allows you to manage and distribute content globally, providing a single source of truth to efficiently scale your content. This means you can federate and unify fragmented data silos into one powerful GraphQL API, so that you can ship exceptional product experiences faster without backend resources.
In 2025, Hygraph offers built-in AI capabilities like AI Assist for content and an agentic approach to workflows. This means you can generate and personalize content faster than ever.
For example, you can use Hygraph’s AI agents to transform unstructured inputs into structured content, automate repetitive workload, or orchestrate multi-step workflows across teams. All these AI actions are governed and transparent, which follows Hygraph’s “velocity with governance” philosophy.
Although Hygraph’s free plan gets you only up to 3 seats, users say its paid plans are pretty cheap compared to competitors.
GraphiQL is the original GraphQL IDE, and the 2.0 release makes it better than ever. This is mostly thanks to a new plugin architecture and sleek interface with handy features like explorer and autocomplete.
Maintained by the GraphQL Foundation, GraphiQL brings the new era of data querying languages to the next level by providing the necessary interface for writing, validating, and testing GraphQL queries and mutations.
The tool gives you a clean workspace to write queries, explore schemas, and see results. More importantly, unlike the now-deprecated GraphQL Playground, GraphiQL is actively maintained and secure.
Lightweight and open-source, GraphiQL 2.0 is the go-to GraphQL sandbox for many teams. One user said he uses GraphiQL because it’s as simple as it gets and has everything he needs for composing daily queries.
Formerly known as GraphCDN, Stellate offers GraphQL Edge Platform solutions that optimize and secure GraphQL APIs at the computing edge. It acts as a smart proxy or gateway for GraphQL, running at the edge to handle requests faster, more securely, and more cost-effectively.
Edge caching is one of its most popular features among developers (as well as one of the most popular GraphQL tools in our 2024 State of GraphQL Report). It allows you to speed up performance, reduce cloud costs, and prevent downtime by offloading repetitive traffic.
Stellate’s caching layer is globally distributed, so repeated queries are served in microseconds from edge servers — a lifesaver in times when real-time apps demand instant data.
Postman isn’t just for REST anymore — in 2025, this all-in-one API platform has a dedicated GraphQL client that can examine your schema from a URL, offer a friendly schema explorer, and autocomplete your queries.
The client comes with all the usual Postman niceties like environment variables and collaboration. Its built-in AI assistant called “Postbot” can even generate test scripts or help debug GraphQL calls.
With Postman, you can conveniently handle REST and GraphQL side-by-side, although some power users feel it’s missing deeper in-app schema documentation like in GraphiQL.
GraphQL Mesh is an open-source framework you can use to turn almost any data source into a unified GraphQL API, regardless of their underlying technology or protocol. Whether it’s REST endpoints, databases, or gRPC, Mesh can wrap them all by generating a GraphQL schema on the go.
You can use Mesh to avoid writing tons of glue code, for example, when bridging legacy systems or third-party APIs. Maintained by The Guild, Mesh today comes with plugins for transformations, caching, and security. This does add some complexity, but if you need to unite diverse APIs into one graph, Mesh is a solution worth checking out.
Apollo Studio is a cloud platform for managing and developing GraphQL APIs and data graphs at scale. It provides a unified hub for schemas, performance monitoring, and collaboration.
In 2025, Apollo is leading the charge into the AI arena. Its MCP (Model-Controlled Procedure) Server allows LLM-based agents to safely query GraphQL APIs. This means your graph can feed real-time data to AI assistants with proper governance. Developers appreciate Apollo’s reliable out-of-box caching, which makes it easy to build fast and performant applications.
GraphQL Voyager visualizes your GraphQL schema as an interactive graph, and it’s a great tool when designing or discussing your data model.
Voyager auto-generates a schema map where you can see types and their relationships at any time. It’s a great way for juniors or non-developers to quickly grasp the structure of a GraphQL API. With around 6,000 GitHub stars, Voyager has proven its value in the community.
This GraphQL tool is read-only and purely for visualization, so there’s no risk of someone changing data while exploring.
GraphQL Code Generator is an excellent choice for eliminating boilerplate coding. Maintained by The Guild, this tool scans your schema and queries to deliver ready-to-use code (TypeScript types, React hooks, etc.) tailored to your stack. There’s no need to manually write types for your GraphQL data, which saves time and prevents inconsistencies as your schema evolves.
Code Generator supports a wide array of plugins, keeping pace with new frameworks and needs. Thanks to end-to-end type safety for your entire application, the tool automatically creates TypeScript types from your schema and operations. This helps catch errors at build-time instead of runtime.
Insomnia is an open-source desktop application that you can use to send and test HTTP, GraphQL, and other API requests. Apart from a forever-free pricing plan, users love its minimalist UI that packs powerful features.
For GraphQL, Insomnia offers intelligent query auto-completion, schema introspection, and environment variable support to manage different configurations. It also supports syncing queries and environments for easy team collaboration.
And while many stick with Insomnia for its versatility (one tool for REST and GraphQL) and its growing library of plugins, some users believe that the platform has become bloated with features, and move to faster alternatives, such as Postman.
Altair GraphQL Client is a free, open-source GraphQL IDE with a rich feature set and appealing interface. It offers a polished UI for writing and testing queries, with tweaks like query history, environment variables, and automated headers.
Expert users appreciate advanced features such as pre-request scripting for auth tokens and the ability to compress queries. In just a few years, Altair has grown its fan base significantly — over 5,000 GitHub stars.
Altair is a popular choice because it focuses purely on GraphQL, cutting the bloat of heavier API tools. You can work on multiple queries in different windows, set headers, download responses, reload docs, etc. It also comes as an extension for Firefox and Chrome, and a Mac, Linux, and Windows app.
GraphQL Editor is a visual IDE for schema design. It lets you create and visualize a GraphQL schema using a drag-and-drop interface, and even generate a fake backend for instant testing.
By 2025, GraphQL Editor has added collaboration features like team schema libraries and real-time editing for groups. It’s a great choice for prototyping and brainstorming, and you can even deploy a mock GraphQL server straight from your design to try it out.
Although you’ll eventually implement the schema in code, GraphQL Editor streamlines the early design phase and gets everyone on the same page.
Prisma is a TypeScript-based ORM (Object-Relational Mapper) for building backends. It can auto-generate a GraphQL-friendly API layer on your database, saving you from writing tons of boilerplate resolvers.
Developers love Prisma’s strongly-typed client, which “makes Sequelize look like a joke” and how smoothly it integrates with frameworks like Next.js and Redwood.
In 2025, Prisma offers reliable migrations, flexible query APIs, and a growing ecosystem. Some users caution that very large projects can hit performance snags, but for most teams, Prisma significantly accelerates development.
WunderGraph is an open-source API developer platform that simplifies the development of full-stack applications by acting as a unified API gateway and GraphQL layer.
It auto-generates a secure GraphQL gateway for your data sources, which makes it a direct competitor to Apollo. The biggest differentiator, however, is WunderGraph’s new Cosmo platform that uses AI to integrate non-GraphQL services.
Cosmo Connect uses AI tools to automatically integrate REST, SOAP, and gRPC APIs into GraphQL Federation without costly rewrites. Basically, it lets AI handle the tedious parts of wiring up legacy APIs.
WunderGraph also focuses on type safety and built-in edge caching for performance. The community may be smaller than Apollo’s, but early adopters praise how it simplifies complex setups.
The number of major international companies incorporating GraphQL is growing - Shopify, Github, Medium, Docker, Twitter, Airbnb, and Paypal are just some of the mega-enterprises which have implemented GraphQL into their tech stack. Many of these tools, which began as niche products, have now seen wide adoption across the GraphQL Community. The speed of adoption of GraphQL in major enterprises and growing companies demonstrates that GraphQL is here to stay and will not be wiped out anytime soon.
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