#graph RAG

Three distinct RAG hardware rigs standing in a row on one long bench in a bright lab — a minimal single-node rig, a taller graph-database rig with denser interconnect, and a compact agent-controller rig with looping return cables

Naive, Graph, and Agentic: A Systems Comparison of RAG Architectures

Naive, hybrid, graph-augmented, iterative, and agentic retrieval are five distinct engineering systems, not five leaderboard entries. Compared on latency, cost, and failure surface, each wins a different workload — and none of them ranks the others.

By Brecht Corbeel · August 11, 2026 · 21 min read

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