> CTEs won’t always be quite as performant as optimizing your SQL to be as concise as possible. In most cases I have seen performance differences smaller than a

> CTEs won’t always be quite as performant as optimizing your SQL to be as concise as possible. In most cases I have seen performance differences smaller than a 2X difference, this tradeoff for readability is a nobrainer as far as I’m concerned. This is the key trade-off you need to keep in the back of your head. Pre-mature performance optimization is the root of all evil; prefer readability first. But the fact remains that you should be setting timeouts and other time budgets, tracing calls from API through to the database, seeing what's taking the most time. If you get to the point where you need to optimize a CTE-based query, be prepared to rewrite it.