Apollo Client vs Netflix DGS

Apollo Client is a JavaScript library for managing GraphQL data in applications. It can fetch, cache and modify data from local and remote sources, then update the interface as data changes. Developers describe a query and receive its data without manually managing loading states. Normalized caching can make responses to cached queries almost immediate. The core @apollo/client library has built-in React integration, including hooks and Suspense, and the library can be added incrementally to JavaScript or TypeScript applications. It works with any build setup and GraphQL API. Community integrations extend support to frameworks including Angular, Vue, Svelte, Solid.js and Ember, as well as native iOS and Android. Apollo Client also supports GraphOS Router features such as incremental delivery, subscriptions and persisted-query safelisting. Chrome and Firefox extensions provide GraphiQL and tools for inspecting watched queries, mutations and cache. Apollo Client is free and open source. GraphOS Free includes one self-hosted router limited to 60 requests per minute; the separate Developer plan is $5 a month, billed monthly.

Netflix DGS is a free, open-source GraphQL server framework for Spring Boot, deployed as a self-hosted API service. Its annotation-based programming model supports Java and Kotlin, with Gradle or Maven builds. DGS favors schema-first development: schema files belong in src/main/resources/schema, and its Gradle plugin can generate Java types from a GraphQL schema. A test framework runs GraphQL queries in lightweight unit tests, while data loaders batch requests to help address the N+1 problem. The framework supports GraphQL Federation, WebSocket and SSE subscriptions, file uploads, error handling, and extension points. Spring Security integration allows @Secured on data fetchers after security configuration. DGS also integrates with Spring for GraphQL, although that path currently lacks SSE subscriptions and some DGS data-loader features do not work with Spring for GraphQL data loaders. A browser GraphiQL editor and an IntelliJ plugin are included. Current documentation requires Spring Boot 3 and JDK 17; DGS 11+ with Spring Boot 4 is actively maintained, while DGS 10.x receives most feature backports until the second half of 2026.