# PathRAG: Pruning Graph-based Retrieval Augmented Generation with Relational Paths

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.14902 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.14902/

## Key facts

- Cited by 61 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Knowledge-graph and structured-knowledge RAG, one of 15 directions in Retrieval-augmented generation.
- Builds on 36 of its 57 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Feb 2025.

## Placed in

- Retrieval-augmented generation / [Knowledge-graph and structured-knowledge RAG](https://mlsanity.com/rag/knowledge-graph-and-structured-knowledge-rag/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 36)

- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.11401/) (2020)
- [Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Tools](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04761/) (2023)
- [HotpotQA: A Dataset for Diverse, Explainable Multi-hop Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.09600/) (2018)
- [Lost in the Middle: How Language Models Use Long Contexts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.03172/) (2023)
- [TriviaQA: A Large Scale Distantly Supervised Challenge Dataset for Reading Comprehension](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.03551/) (2017)
- [REALM: Retrieval-Augmented Language Model Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.08909/) (2020)
- [From Local to Global: A Graph RAG Approach to Query-Focused Summarization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16130/) (2024)
- [Constructing A Multi-hop QA Dataset for Comprehensive Evaluation of Reasoning Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.01060/) (2020)
- [ChatEval: Towards Better LLM-based Evaluators through Multi-Agent Debate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07201/) (2023)
- [Precise Zero-Shot Dense Retrieval without Relevance Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10496/) (2022)
- [The Web as a Knowledge-base for Answering Complex Questions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.06643/) (2018)
- [QA-GNN: Reasoning with Language Models and Knowledge Graphs for Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.06378/) (2021)
- [Large Language Models are Effective Text Rankers with Pairwise Ranking Prompting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.17563/) (2023)
- [The Power of Noise: Redefining Retrieval for RAG Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.14887/) (2024)
- [Think-on-Graph: Deep and Responsible Reasoning of Large Language Model on Knowledge Graph](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.07697/) (2023)
- [Beyond I.I.D.: Three Levels of Generalization for Question Answering on Knowledge Bases](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.07743/) (2020)
- [Learning to Retrieve Reasoning Paths over Wikipedia Graph for Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.10470/) (2019)
- [GNN-RAG: Graph Neural Retrieval for Large Language Model Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20139/) (2024)
- [Large-scale Simple Question Answering with Memory Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02075/) (2015)
- [KG-BART: Knowledge Graph-Augmented BART for Generative Commonsense Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.12677/) (2020)
- [Lift Yourself Up: Retrieval-augmented Text Generation with Self Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.02437/) (2023)
- [Enhancing Noise Robustness of Retrieval-Augmented Language Models with Adaptive Adversarial Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20978/) (2024)
- [Simple Is Effective: The Roles of Graphs and Large Language Models in Knowledge-Graph-Based Retrieval-Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.20724/) (2024)
- [Llama2Vec: Unsupervised Adaptation of Large Language Models for Dense Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.15503/) (2023)
- [Plan-on-Graph: Self-Correcting Adaptive Planning of Large Language Model on Knowledge Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.23875/) (2024)
- [FiD-Light: Efficient and Effective Retrieval-Augmented Text Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14290/) (2022)
- [Neuro-Symbolic Language Modeling with Automaton-augmented Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12431/) (2022)
- [Modeling Relation Paths for Representation Learning of Knowledge Bases](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.00379/) (2015)
- [SQuALITY: Building a Long-Document Summarization Dataset the Hard Way](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11465/) (2022)
- [The Chronicles of RAG: The Retriever, the Chunk and the Generator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.07883/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 61)

- [A Survey of Context Engineering for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.13334/) (2025)
- [Graph-R1: Towards Agentic GraphRAG Framework via End-to-end Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.21892/) (2025)
- [When to use Graphs in RAG: A Comprehensive Analysis for Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05690/) (2025)
- [Graphs Meet AI Agents: Taxonomy, Progress, and Future Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.18019/) (2025)
- [HyperMem: Hypergraph Memory for Long-Term Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.08256/) (2026)
- [Cog-RAG: Cognitive-Inspired Dual-Hypergraph with Theme Alignment Retrieval-Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.13201/) (2025)
- [AgentLongBench: A Controllable Long Benchmark For Long-Contexts Agents via Environment Rollouts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.20730/) (2026)
- [SkillRAE: Agent Skill-Based Context Compilation for Retrieval-Augmented Execution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.10114/) (2026)
- [Query-Aware Flow Diffusion for Graph-Based RAG with Retrieval Guarantees](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.18775/) (2026)
- [Batch Query Processing and Optimization for Agentic Workflows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.02121/) (2025)
- [Weak-to-Strong GraphRAG: Aligning Weak Retrievers with Large Language Models for Graph-based Retrieval Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.22518/) (2025)
- [GraphSearch: An Agentic Deep Searching Workflow for Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.22009/) (2025)
- [HyperGraphPro: Progress-Aware Reinforcement Learning for Structure-Guided Hypergraph RAG](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.17755/) (2026)
- [S-Path-RAG: Semantic-Aware Shortest-Path Retrieval Augmented Generation for Multi-Hop Knowledge Graph Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.23512/) (2026)
- [Agents-K1: Towards Agent-native Knowledge Orchestration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.13669/) (2026)
- [RippleMem: From Isolated Retrieval to Associative Recollection for Long-Term Agent Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.13334/) (2026)
- [PRoH: Dynamic Planning and Reasoning over Knowledge Hypergraphs for Retrieval-Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.12434/) (2025)
- [NeuroPath: Neurobiology-Inspired Path Tracking and Reflection for Semantically Coherent Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.14096/) (2025)
- [Knowledge Is Not Static: Order-Aware Hypergraph RAG for Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.12185/) (2026)
- [TAdaRAG: Task Adaptive Retrieval-Augmented Generation via On-the-Fly Knowledge Graph Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.12520/) (2025)
- [Multi-hop Reasoning via Early Knowledge Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.20144/) (2025)
- [TagRAG: Tag-guided Hierarchical Knowledge Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.05254/) (2025)
- [Toward Robust GraphRAG: Mitigating Retrieval Drift and Hallucination from Imperfect Knowledge Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.14828/) (2026)
- [Do We Still Need GraphRAG? Benchmarking RAG and GraphRAG for Agentic Search Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.09666/) (2026)
- [DOTRAG: Retrieval-Time Reasoning Along Paths](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.18760/) (2026)
- [AdaptR1: Reinforcement Learning Based Adaptive Interleaved Thinking in Multi-hop Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.31062/) (2026)
- [FLOWREADER: Min-Cost Flow Optimization for Multi-Modal Long Document Q&A](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.07235/) (2026)
- [Multi-Granularity Context-Enhanced RAG over Multimodal Knowledge Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.25986/) (2026)
- [ELITE: Embedding-Less retrieval with Iterative Text Exploration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.11908/) (2025)
- [DGRAG: Distributed Graph-based Retrieval-Augmented Generation in Edge-Cloud Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19847/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) improves the response quality of large language models (LLMs) by retrieving knowledge from external databases. Typical RAG approaches split the text database into chunks, organizing them in a flat structure for efficient searches. To better capture the inherent dependencies and structured relationships across the text database, researchers propose to organize textual information into an indexing graph, known asgraph-based RAG. However, we argue that the limitation of current graph-based RAG methods lies in the redundancy of the retrieved information, rather than its insufficiency. Moreover, previous methods use a flat structure to organize retrieved information within the prompts, leading to suboptimal performance. To overcome these limitations, we propose PathRAG, which retrieves key relational paths from the indexing graph, and converts these paths into textual form for prompting LLMs. Specifically, PathRAG effectively reduces redundant information with flow-based pruning, while guiding LLMs to generate more logical and coherent responses with path-based prompting. Experimental results show that PathRAG consistently outperforms state-of-the-art baselines across six datasets and five evaluation dimensions. The code is available at the following link: https://github.com/BUPT-GAMMA/PathRAG