It's an unlikely comparison in the first place; who is considering, on one hand, using SQLite right on the client device, and on the other, maybe spinning up a graph database that will almost certainly not just run on the client device? I submit that it's next to nobody. You can run SQLite on a server, but nearly nobody does that either (and not without reason). The idea that recursive CTEs are some sort of arcane technique that's impossible to debug is also not my experience with them at all.