How the N+1 Problem Silently Slows Laravel GraphQL APIs and How to Fix It

The N+1 query problem is a common performance issue in GraphQL APIs built with Laravel, where a single query triggers one additional database call for each item in a list. For example, fetching 20 articles with their authors can generate 21 separate SQL queries instead of just two. In REST APIs, eager loading with explicit 'with()' calls makes the problem visible in code, but in GraphQL the risk is structural because relations are resolved automatically per request. The Lighthouse package for Laravel addresses this by default through its standard relation directives such as @belongsTo and @hasMany, which batch all required keys and execute a single grouped query. However, the problem can resurface with custom resolvers for computed fields like average ratings, where naive implementations still execute one database query per list item.