diff --git a/Cargo.lock b/Cargo.lock
index 4670bee0..29add1d9 100644
--- a/Cargo.lock
+++ b/Cargo.lock
@@ -4084,7 +4084,6 @@ dependencies = [
  "arrow-array",
  "arrow-schema",
  "async-trait",
- "criterion",
  "datafusion",
  "datafusion-common",
  "datafusion-expr",
@@ -4095,7 +4094,6 @@ dependencies = [
  "lance",
  "lance-arrow",
  "lance-graph-catalog",
- "lance-index",
  "lance-linalg",
  "lance-namespace",
  "nom 7.1.3",
@@ -4107,6 +4105,20 @@ dependencies = [
  "url",
 ]
 
+[[package]]
+name = "lance-graph-benches"
+version = "0.1.0"
+dependencies = [
+ "arrow-array",
+ "arrow-schema",
+ "criterion",
+ "futures",
+ "lance",
+ "lance-graph",
+ "tempfile",
+ "tokio",
+]
+
 [[package]]
 name = "lance-graph-catalog"
 version = "0.5.3"
diff --git a/Cargo.toml b/Cargo.toml
index c8d726e2..c66043bd 100644
--- a/Cargo.toml
+++ b/Cargo.toml
@@ -3,5 +3,6 @@ members = [
     "crates/lance-graph",
     "crates/lance-graph-catalog",
     "crates/lance-graph-python",
+    "crates/lance-graph-benches",
 ]
 resolver = "2"
diff --git a/crates/lance-graph-benches/Cargo.toml b/crates/lance-graph-benches/Cargo.toml
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..c8c74d51
--- /dev/null
+++ b/crates/lance-graph-benches/Cargo.toml
@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
+[package]
+name = "lance-graph-benches"
+version = "0.1.0"
+edition = "2021"
+publish = false
+description = "Benchmarks for lance-graph (not published)"
+
+[dependencies]
+lance-graph = { path = "../lance-graph", version = "0.5.3" }
+lance = "1.0.0"
+arrow-array = "56.2"
+arrow-schema = "56.2"
+criterion = { version = "0.5", features = ["async", "async_tokio", "html_reports"] }
+futures = "0.3"
+tempfile = "3"
+tokio = { version = "1.37", features = ["macros", "rt-multi-thread"] }
+
+[[bench]]
+name = "graph_execution"
+harness = false
diff --git a/crates/lance-graph-benches/README.md b/crates/lance-graph-benches/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..ce63a572
--- /dev/null
+++ b/crates/lance-graph-benches/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+# Lance Graph Benchmarks
+
+Performance benchmarks for the `lance-graph` crate.
+
+## Running Benchmarks
+
+From the repository root:
+
+```bash
+# Run all benchmarks
+cargo bench -p lance-graph-benches
+
+# Run specific benchmark
+cargo bench -p lance-graph-benches --bench graph_execution
+```
+
+## Benchmarks
+
+- **graph_execution**: End-to-end query execution benchmarks
+  - Basic node filtering and projection
+  - Single-hop relationship expansion
+  - Two-hop relationship expansion
+  - Tests with datasets of varying sizes (100, 10K, 1M rows)
+
+## Note
+
+This crate is not published to crates.io and is excluded from releases.
+It exists solely for performance testing during development.
diff --git a/crates/lance-graph/benches/graph_execution.rs b/crates/lance-graph-benches/benches/graph_execution.rs
similarity index 100%
rename from crates/lance-graph/benches/graph_execution.rs
rename to crates/lance-graph-benches/benches/graph_execution.rs
diff --git a/crates/lance-graph/Cargo.toml b/crates/lance-graph/Cargo.toml
index 716a0888..f908239b 100644
--- a/crates/lance-graph/Cargo.toml
+++ b/crates/lance-graph/Cargo.toml
@@ -47,13 +47,7 @@ unity-catalog = ["lance-graph-catalog/unity-catalog"]
 delta = ["dep:deltalake", "dep:url"]
 
 [dev-dependencies]
-criterion = { version = "0.5", features = ["async", "async_tokio", "html_reports"] }
 futures = "0.3"
 lance-arrow = "1.0.0"
-lance-index = "1.0.0"
 tempfile = "3"
 tokio = { version = "1.37", features = ["macros", "rt-multi-thread"] }
-
-[[bench]]
-name = "graph_execution"
-harness = false