API architecture is a critical decision that affects your application’s performance, developer experience, and maintainability. Let’s compare REST and GraphQL to help you make an informed choice.

REST: The Established Standard

REST (Representational State Transfer) has been the dominant API paradigm for over a decade. It uses HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE) to perform operations on resources.

Advantages:

• Well-understood and widely adopted
• Excellent caching support via HTTP
• Simple to implement and debug
• Works well with CDNs

Challenges:

• Over-fetching: Getting more data than needed
• Under-fetching: Multiple requests to get related data
• Versioning can become complex

GraphQL: Flexible Data Fetching

GraphQL, developed by Facebook, provides a query language that lets clients request exactly the data they need.

Advantages:

• Request only the data you need
• Single endpoint for all operations
• Strong typing with schema definition
• Excellent developer tooling

Challenges:

• More complex to set up initially
• Caching is more difficult
• Potential for expensive queries
• Learning curve for teams new to GraphQL

When to Choose Each

Choose REST when:

• Building simple CRUD applications
• Your team is familiar with REST patterns
• Caching is critical for performance
• You’re building public APIs

Choose GraphQL when:

• Building mobile apps where bandwidth matters
• You have complex, interconnected data
• Multiple clients need different data shapes
• You want a flexible, evolvable API

Our Experience

At Rojas Consulting, we’ve implemented both REST and GraphQL APIs for various clients. For our IoT platform project with Redtapp, we chose GraphQL because it allowed mobile and web clients to fetch exactly the data they needed, reducing bandwidth usage by 40%.

Need help deciding on your API architecture? Contact us for a technical consultation.