GraphQL vs REST API: Which Is Better for Your Project in 2025?

REST APIs are an architectural style using HTTP for scalable web services and adhere to principles like statelessness and cacheability. GraphQL offers precise data fetching, minimizing over-fetching and enhancing flexibility for complex data. REST excels in simplicity and has a mature tooling ecosystem, making it dominant in enterprise settings. GraphQL is adopted by over 61% of organizations, indicating its growing popularity. Performance depends on the use case, with REST being better for simple CRUD and caching. GraphQL shines for mobile apps and complex queries where exact data retrieval is needed. An API Gateway is vital for managing both REST and GraphQL effectively. It provides unified security, monitoring, and transformation. Ultimately, there's no single winner; the choice depends on project needs and team expertise. Both architectures are foundational to modern API development.