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GraphQLConf 2026 has ended
May 19 - 20 | In-Person Only
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Type: Performance clear filter
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Wednesday, May 20
 

10:15am PDT

When GraphQL Gets Expensive: Performance & Cost Patterns in Production Serverless Architectures - Harpreet Siddhu, AWS Community Builder & Shravanth Gowda Venkatesh, Independent Researcher
Wednesday May 20, 2026 10:15am - 10:40am PDT
GraphQL simplifies client development through flexible, expressive data queries. However, in serverless production environments, that flexibility can quietly increase latency and infrastructure cost.

In AWS-based architectures using Lambda, DynamoDB, Aurora Serverless, and distributed services, resolver design and query structure directly impact execution time, cold starts, and overall spend. Unlike REST, GraphQL shifts cost dynamics to query complexity and resolver fan-out, and often in ways teams don’t anticipate until production traffic scales.

This session examines common performance and cost anti-patterns in serverless GraphQL systems, including N+1 resolver cascades, unbounded query depth, over-fetching, and inefficient resolver fan-out. We’ll explore how these patterns affect Lambda duration, concurrency, and downstream data stores.

Attendees will learn practical mitigation strategies such as batching with DataLoader, caching and persisted queries, query complexity limits, schema guardrails, and observability techniques to detect bottlenecks early.
Speakers
avatar for Harpreet Siddhu

Harpreet Siddhu

Lead Software Engineer, AWS Community Builder
Harpreet Siddhu is a Lead Software Engineer and AWS Certified Solution Architect, Developer, and CloudOps engineer, AWS community Builder, and AWS road to re:Invent hackathon Champion and with over a decade of experience designing and modernizing cloud-native systems. He specializes... Read More →
avatar for Shravanth Venkatesh

Shravanth Venkatesh

AWS Solutions Architect, Independent Researcher
Shravanth is a AWS Certified Solutions Architect and Principal Software Engineer with 8+ years designing and scaling production systems on AWS. Leading teams shipping serverless healthcare platforms across AWS, he saw firsthand how GraphQL's flexibility quietly reshapes cost and performance... Read More →
Wednesday May 20, 2026 10:15am - 10:40am PDT
Grand Ballroom I
  Performance
  • Audience Level Beginner
  • Presentation Slides Attached Yes
 
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