I would be shocked if a good recursive backtracker could beat a good SAT solver for large problems. I mean, if you could solve SAT with recursive backtracking people would. That is the core of a SAT or CP solver, with the all the extra clever stuff.
I've spent significant chunks of my career help people throw away backtracking searchers people polished over years with a CP-SAT model I threw together in 30 minutes, often much to their upset.
You can for Sudoku often beat a CP-SAT solver, but that's because the problems are trivial and take milliseconds. If you look at more difficult Sudoku variants, or 16x16 grids, backtracking solvers start to fall behind.
I've spent significant chunks of my career help people throw away backtracking searchers people polished over years with a CP-SAT model I threw together in 30 minutes, often much to their upset.
You can for Sudoku often beat a CP-SAT solver, but that's because the problems are trivial and take milliseconds. If you look at more difficult Sudoku variants, or 16x16 grids, backtracking solvers start to fall behind.