TERAG: Token-Efficient Graph-Based Retrieval-Augmented Generation

Qiao Xiao; Hong Ting Tsang; Jiaxin Bai

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arXiv · 2509.18667

TERAG: Token-Efficient Graph-Based Retrieval-Augmented Generation

Qiao Xiao·Hong Ting Tsang·Jiaxin Bai

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Abstract

Graph-based Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) has become a widely studied approach for improving the reasoning, accuracy, and factuality of Large Language Models (LLMs). However, many existing graph-based RAG systems overlook the high cost associated with LLM token usage during graph construction, hindering large-scale adoption. To address this, we propose TERAG, a simple yet effective framework designed to build informative graphs at a significantly lower cost. Inspired by HippoRAG, we incorporate Personalized PageRank (PPR) during the retrieval phase, and we achieve at least 80% of the accuracy of widely used graph-based RAG methods while consuming only 3%-11% of the output tokens. With its low token footprint and efficient construction pipeline, TERAG is well-suited for large-scale and cost-sensitive deployment scenarios.

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Qiao Xiao, Hong Ting Tsang, Jiaxin Bai. 2025-09-23. TERAG: Token-Efficient Graph-Based Retrieval-Augmented Generation. https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.18667

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