EF Core generates pretty good queries for common cases. I'm not entirely sure about really complex analytical queries, but you might want drop down to SQL for t

EF Core generates pretty good queries for common cases. I'm not entirely sure about really complex analytical queries, but you might want drop down to SQL for those anyway. There is one gigantic footgun in EF Core, that is the decision between single query and split query. If you choose single query in the wrong situation you can end up with truly pathological queries. I might blame EF Core here a bit for a dangerous default, but to be honest the other choice would be dangerous in a different way, so there is no obvious good default choice here. This is a part that you need to understand to use this ORM, and fortunately it generates warnings now and kind of forces you to choose the strategy. The one other aspect that helps to generate good queries with EF Core is to use "Select()" for any case where you want to request fewer columns than available in your tables. I find it quite natural to write queries this way in any case.