Lighthouse vs WunderGraph Cosmo

Lighthouse is a framework for serving GraphQL from an existing Laravel application. It uses GraphQL Schema Definition Language and server-side directives to describe data and add behavior, while reusing Laravel concepts and Eloquent models. Built-in directives can create records, resolve relationships, apply query constraints, paginate results, and validate fields and arguments. Developers can add custom directives for reusable behavior, while the @can directive family can use Laravel Policies to restrict field operations. The default endpoint is `/graphql`, and any GraphQL client can use it. Lighthouse also supports standard Laravel authentication mechanisms, including Sanctum, and GraphQL subscriptions for event updates. Parsed queries can be cached with Laravel cache stores or local PHP files using OPcache; Automatic Persisted Queries are supported with Apollo compatibility. Installation uses Composer in a Laravel or Lumen project. The package is free and self-hosted. GraphQL tooling such as GraphiQL is not included, and federation support is experimental and cannot serve as a federation gateway.

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.