*article is a summary of presentation carried out during APIDays Madrid 2019 REST standard APIs are the most common, but GraphQL and gRPC APIs are gaining popularity, as well as doubts about the best application of these standards:
What are the characteristics and advantages of each of these standards?
What standard should we choose for our project?
To clarify these points, we will consider the requirements of 3 of the main use cases with APIs and understand how each standard can contribute in these cases.
1) Experience APIs
They are APIs for consumption by Front-end Apps and Devices for digital experiences.
Below are some requirements:
2) Open APIs
They are APIs for integrations with partners and open innovation.
Some requirements are:
3) Internal APIs
They are APIs for communication between microservices and internal integrations.
Below are some requirements:
APIs REST, GraphQL and gRPC: Comparison
In the table below, we have compared the REST, GraphQL and gRPC standard features:
To choose the best option for your project, we suggest making an eligibility matrix, where the requirements of the use case and a score for each standard will be.