The Graph vs Bitquery – Solving Blockchain Data Problems

Blockchains are “Mirror of Erised.” You will always find your interests in them.

Economists see blockchains as economies. Technologists see blockchains as platforms to build decentralized applications. Entrepreneurs see them as a new way to monetize their products, and law enforcement agencies look for criminal activity in them.

Everyone looks at blockchains their own way. However, without easy and reliable access to blockchain data, everyone is blind.

Blockchain data problem

Blockchains emit millions of transactions and events every day. To analyze blockchains for useful information, you need to extract, store, and index data and then provide an efficient way to access it. This creates two main problems:

• Infrastructure cost: Before developing an application, you need reliable access to blockchain data. For this, you need to invest in infrastructure, which is costly and a barrier for developers and startups.
• Actionable context: To get value from blockchain data, you need to add context. For example, is a transaction a standard transfer or a DEX trade? Is it a normal DEX trade or an arbitrage? Meaningful blockchain data helps businesses solve real-world problems.

This article looks at the similarities and differences between The Graph and Bitquery.

The Graph Overview

The Graph is a decentralized indexing protocol. Anyone can create a GraphQL schema (a Subgraph) and define blockchain data APIs according to their need. Indexers on The Graph Network use that schema to extract and index the data, and you access it through GraphQL APIs. The hosted service The Graph started with was sunset in 2024; today all subgraphs run on the decentralized network, which supports Ethereum and many other chains.

Problem Addressed by The Graph

Developers building decentralized applications (dapps) would otherwise depend on centralized servers to process and index their smart contract data, for example to create APIs for third-party services or to give dapp users richer data. That creates a single point of failure.

The Graph addresses this by creating a decentralized network for accessing indexed smart contract data, removing the need for centralized servers.

Bitquery Overview

Bitquery builds a blockchain data engine that provides simple access to data across multiple blockchains. Using Bitquery's GraphQL APIs, you can access blockchain data for more than 40 chains from one unified schema, and consume the same data as real-time streams over WebSocket, Kafka, and gRPC.

Problem Addressed by Bitquery

Developers, analysts, and businesses all need blockchain data for different reasons: analyzing networks, building applications, investigating crimes. Bitquery provides unified APIs to access data across chains for sectors such as compliance, trading, analytics, and wallets.

The unified schema lets developers scale to multiple blockchains quickly and pull data from several chains in a single API.

Common Things

GraphQL

Both The Graph and Bitquery use GraphQL extensively, giving end users the freedom to query blockchain data flexibly. Read here why GraphQL is better than REST APIs for blockchain data.

Removing Infrastructure Cost

Both projects remove infrastructure costs for end users and provide a model where you pay only for what you use.

The Graph Architecture

The Graph runs on a network of Indexers, Curators, and Delegators.

Indexers run Graph nodes that store and index subgraph data. Curators signal which subgraphs are worth indexing, and Delegators stake GRT with Indexers.

The Graph aims to be a decentralized indexing and query layer for web3 data.

Bitquery Architecture

Bitquery prioritizes performance and developer experience over decentralization. Bitquery's infrastructure indexes 40+ blockchains into a single unified schema and serves the same dataset through GraphQL APIs, WebSocket subscriptions, Kafka and gRPC streams, cloud datashares, and an MCP server for AI agents.

Differences between The Graph and Bitquery

There are considerable differences between The Graph and Bitquery. Let's look at the significant ones.

Blockchain Support

The Graph's decentralized network supports Ethereum and a growing set of other chains through subgraphs. Bitquery supports more than 40 blockchains out of the box and lets you query any of them with the same GraphQL schema, without writing or deploying anything.

API Support

The Graph lets you create your own GraphQL schema (Subgraph) and have Indexers serve it. Defining your own schema means you can shape APIs around your contract's data.

Bitquery follows the unified schema model: the same GraphQL schema works across every supported blockchain, covering transfers, trades, balances, events, calls, and more. You query pre-indexed data instead of defining and deploying an index first.

Ease of Use

With Bitquery, you only need to learn GraphQL and use the schema in the IDE to query any supported chain. With The Graph, if the data you need isn't available in a community subgraph, you also need to write and deploy your own subgraph, which requires coding.

Real-time Data

Bitquery provides GraphQL subscriptions over WebSocket and Kafka streams for production pipelines that need every block with low latency. The Graph is primarily a query layer over indexed historical state; real-time push delivery is not its core model.

Decentralization

The Graph is a decentralized network of nodes indexing and curating blockchain data. We think The Graph's mission to decentralize data access is a novel goal, and we appreciate it. Bitquery focuses instead on the fastest, most scalable multi-blockchain data access, coupled with useful query tooling.

Performance

Bitquery's technology stack is optimized for performance and reliability. A centralized architecture helps optimize latency and response rates.

The Graph's decentralized approach makes it resilient, and network performance has improved considerably since the migration off the hosted service, though performance depends on the Indexers serving your subgraph.

Open Source

The Graph is a fully open source project. Developers can verify the codebase, fork it, or integrate it according to their needs.

Bitquery also embraces open source where it can: tooling and examples are on GitHub, and the hosted MCP server builds on the open-source mcp-clickhouse project. The core indexing backend is closed source.

Data Verifiability

Almost all data on blockchains is financial data, so verifiability matters. The Graph relies on its network's economic incentives and Curators for data quality. Bitquery runs automated systems that check data accuracy across its APIs.

Pricing

The Graph's pricing runs through GRT, its network token, which has traded publicly since December 2020: consumers pay query fees that flow to Indexers.

Bitquery has public pricing at bitquery.io/pricing, starting at $39/mo billed annually, with a 7-day free trial that requires no card. Plans scale up through streams and historical data to enterprise Kafka delivery.

Conclusion

Blockchain data is filled with rich information waiting for analysts to find it. We respect The Graph's aim to decentralize data access for application builders. Bitquery chose a different path: highly reliable, pre-indexed multi-blockchain data served through APIs, streams, and AI-ready interfaces.

The two projects address different needs in the blockchain data market with some clear intersections. If you want to define custom indexes for your own contracts on a decentralized network, The Graph fits. If you want ready-made, unified data across 40+ chains with real-time delivery, Bitquery fits.

Let us know what similarities and differences you see between The Graph and Bitquery.

You might also be interested in:

• Ethereum DEX GraphQL APIs with Examples
• How to get newly created Ethereum Tokens?
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• API to get Ethereum Smart Contract Events
• Simple APIs to get Latest Uniswap Pair Listing

About Bitquery

Bitquery provides blockchain data for 40+ chains through one unified schema. Our products include:

• GraphQL APIs and streams: query historical data or subscribe to real-time updates via WebSocket from the IDE and docs.

• Kafka and gRPC data streams: complete, low-latency onchain data feeds for trading systems and data pipelines.

• MCP server: connect Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client to Bitquery data and query it in plain English.

• Coinpath® MoneyFlow: a crypto investigation platform with auto-tracing, entity labels, and case management.

If you have any questions about our products, ask them on our Telegram channel. Also, subscribe to our newsletter below, we will keep you updated with the latest in the cryptocurrency world.