API Design: REST vs GraphQL — When to Choose Which

REST and GraphQL are both mature, battle-tested approaches to API design. The right choice depends on your specific use case, team, and constraints.

REST: The Default Choice

REST is simple, well-understood, and works with every HTTP client ever made. For most applications, it’s the right starting point.

REST Strengths

• Caching is trivial. HTTP caching, CDN caching, browser caching — they all work out of the box with GET requests.
• Tooling is universal. Every language, every framework, every monitoring tool understands REST.
• Easy to reason about. One endpoint, one resource, predictable behavior.

// Clean REST endpoint
GET    /api/projects          // List projects
GET    /api/projects/:id      // Get one project
POST   /api/projects          // Create project
PUT    /api/projects/:id      // Update project
DELETE /api/projects/:id      // Delete project

REST Weaknesses

• Over-fetching. The /api/users endpoint returns everything about a user, even if you only need the name.
• Under-fetching. Displaying a dashboard might require 5 separate API calls.
• Versioning overhead. API changes often require /v2/ endpoints or breaking changes.

GraphQL: When You Need Flexibility

GraphQL solves the fetching problem by letting the client specify exactly what data it needs.

GraphQL Strengths

• Precise data fetching. Request only the fields you need.
• Single request. Fetch related data across multiple resources in one query.
• Strongly typed schema. The schema is self-documenting and enables powerful tooling.

# One query, exact data needed
query DashboardData {
  currentUser {
    name
    avatar
  }
  projects(limit: 5) {
    id
    title
    status
    lastActivity
  }
  notifications(unread: true) {
    id
    message
  }
}

GraphQL Weaknesses

• Caching is hard. No HTTP-level caching for POST-based queries. You need a client-side cache (Apollo, urql).
• Complexity overhead. Schema definition, resolvers, dataloaders — there’s more code to maintain.
• N+1 query problem. Without dataloaders, nested queries can hammer your database.
• File uploads are awkward. GraphQL wasn’t designed for multipart uploads.

Decision Framework

Choose REST When

• Your API is resource-oriented (CRUD operations)
• Caching is important for performance
• Your team is small and wants simplicity
• You’re building a public API for third-party developers
• Your clients are diverse (mobile, web, CLI, IoT)

Choose GraphQL When

• Your frontend needs vary significantly across views
• You have deeply nested or related data
• Multiple frontend teams consume the same API
• You’re building a complex dashboard with many data requirements
• You want a strongly typed contract between frontend and backend

The Pragmatic Middle Ground

Many successful applications use both:

• REST for simple CRUD — user management, file uploads, webhooks
• GraphQL for complex reads — dashboards, search, data exploration

You can also get most of GraphQL’s benefits in REST by supporting sparse fieldsets and compound documents (JSON:API style), or by using tRPC for type-safe APIs without the GraphQL overhead.

Our Take

Start with REST. Move specific endpoints to GraphQL only when the over-fetching or under-fetching pain becomes real. Premature GraphQL adoption is one of the most common sources of unnecessary complexity in modern web applications.

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