Stale Time: The duration until a query transitions from fresh to stale. As long as the query is fresh, data will always be read from the cache - no network requests will happen! If the query is stale (which per default is instantly), you will still get data from the cache, but a background refresh can happen under certain conditions.
Cache Time: The duration until inactive queries will be removed from the cache. This defaults to 5 minutes. Queries transition to the inactive state as soon as there are no observers registered, so when all components which use the query have unmounted.