REST strengths

  • Simple mental model — resources and HTTP verbs.
  • Native HTTP caching via GET + CDN.
  • Universally understood — any client, any language, no special tooling.
  • Lower operational overhead — no schema registry, no resolver complexity.

GraphQL strengths

  • Client-specified queries — no over-fetching or under-fetching.
  • Single endpoint, single round-trip for complex nested data.
  • Strongly typed schema — auto-generated docs and IDE completion.
  • Great for product APIs powering multiple clients (web, iOS, Android) with different data needs.

GraphQL tradeoffs

  • N+1 query problem — naive resolvers execute one DB query per object. Requires DataLoader batching.
  • Caching is harder — queries are POSTs; CDN caching requires persisted queries.
  • Authorization complexity — field-level permissions are harder than endpoint-level.

Decision rule

Use REST for simple CRUD APIs, internal service-to-service communication, and teams without GraphQL experience. Use GraphQL when multiple clients with divergent data needs consume a product API and over-fetching is a real cost.