GraphQL Ruby vs WunderGraph Cosmo

GraphQL Ruby is a free, self-hosted Ruby gem that implements the GraphQL Server Specification for Ruby or Rails applications. It provides a self-documenting, strongly typed schema and serves queries, mutations, subscriptions, streaming responses, and multiplexed queries. Configurable depth and complexity validation can reject deeply nested or overly complex requests. Authorization tools handle schema visibility and checks on application objects during execution, while authentication is generally left to the application controller. GraphQL::Dataloader batches external data access and caches results per query; AsyncDataloader supports parallel I/O. Documentation covers Relay, Apollo Client, GraphQL.js Client, GraphiQL, urql, and custom JavaScript, plus monitoring integrations. The open-source gem is installed through RubyGems and uses the MIT license. The GraphQL Ruby gem costs nothing. GraphQL::Pro costs $1,100 a year, and GraphQL::Enterprise costs $2,400 a year under commercial licenses.

WunderGraph Cosmo is an open-source GraphQL Federation platform for platform teams, offering schema checks, guardrails and observability. It unifies GraphQL, REST, gRPC and Kafka in a federated graph and supports Apollo Federation versions 1 and 2 across existing GraphQL services. Cosmo Router is a Go-based, Apache 2.0-licensed router and gateway. Teams can deploy it with Docker, Kubernetes or an AWS Lambda-optimized binary, or use WunderGraph’s managed service. The Schema Registry checks composition, breaking changes, client traffic and linting. Subscriptions work over WebSockets and Server-Sent Events, and event-driven subscriptions can use Kafka, NATS, SQS or RabbitMQ. Cosmo Streams supports Kafka, NATS including JetStream, and Redis. Observability includes OpenTelemetry tracing and Prometheus metrics, which can be exported to compatible backends. The free Developer plan includes one federated graph, 10M requests/month, 10 subgraphs, one team member and seven-day retention. Launch costs $499 a month; Scale costs $3,499 a month. Enterprise pricing is custom. Managed plans include SOC 2 and HIPAA compliance; the site also identifies ISO 27001 certification.