There’s a shiny new toy on the block called GraphQL, and it's gaining a lot of hype. Billed as the future of APIs, it promises more flexibility than REST, better performance through data-fetching efficiency, and a single endpoint to rule them all. But guess what? You probably don’t need it.
Yeah, I said it. For 90% of projects out there, GraphQL is overkill. Yet developers keep rushing to add it to their stack because it's trendy or they want to feel cutting-edge. But just because Facebook invented it doesn't mean you should.
The Over-Promise of Flexibility
The main selling point of GraphQL is its flexibility. It allows clients to query exactly what they need from an API, nothing more, nothing less. Sounds great, right? Who wouldn’t want to fetch only the data they need?
But this flexibility comes at a cost: complexity. With REST, endpoints are simple. You hit a URL, get a response, and call it a day. GraphQL introduces a whole query language, a schema, and a playground of potential issues.
Do you really want to saddle yourself with query optimization issues? You’re now responsible for preventing clients from crafting inefficient queries that could bring your server to its knees. Sure, you can limit the depth of queries or throttle clients, but doesn’t that start to sound like a band-aid on a problem you didn’t even have with REST?
The Over-Hyped Performance Gain
Let’s talk performance. The argument goes: GraphQL reduces the number of network requests by allowing clients to fetch everything in a single query, rather than multiple REST calls. No more over-fetching, no more under-fetching.
But guess what? The real bottleneck is almost never network requests.
In most applications, the time spent between the client and the server is dwarfed by other factors—slow databases, poorly optimized queries, or, I don’t know, the fact that you’re using a bloated JavaScript framework that takes 5 seconds to render a page. If performance is a serious issue, chances are GraphQL won’t magically fix it.
Also, keep in mind that GraphQL doesn’t inherently improve performance on the backend. In fact, your backend might get slower because you're now processing more complex queries. Each field requested in a GraphQL query needs to be resolved individually, which can lead to the infamous N+1 problem if your resolvers aren’t meticulously optimized. Say goodbye to the days when a single endpoint could be cached with ease.
The Myth of Easier API Versioning
Another myth floating around is that GraphQL makes versioning obsolete. “No more v1, v2, v3 of your API!” they say. But this is hardly a solved problem.
What happens when you need to deprecate fields? Or when one of your fields becomes too costly to compute and you don’t want anyone using it anymore? Sure, you can mark it as deprecated, but clients can still query it. You’re back to maintaining legacy code for the sake of “no versioning.”
In REST, when an API endpoint becomes outdated, you simply ship a new version and the world moves on. With GraphQL, you’ve committed to infinite backwards compatibility. Good luck managing that headache when you’ve got dozens of clients, all with their own weird custom queries, that you can’t afford to break.
But We Need It for Microservices! …Do You?
Some people will say, “But GraphQL is great for aggregating multiple microservices into one API!” Fine, but why are you even microservicing everything in the first place?
The dream of microservices is often oversold too, but that's a rant for another time. The point is, if you’ve already bitten off more than you can chew with microservices, GraphQL isn’t going to magically make it easier to manage. Instead, you'll be layering query complexity on top of already complex systems. The result? A tangled mess of queries and services that are harder to debug than ever.
Common Rebuttals (And Why They’re Wrong)
“But our data fetching is inefficient!”
Yeah? Try optimizing your REST endpoints. Add pagination, filtering, or proper indexing in your database. Stop reaching for GraphQL as a crutch to solve poor backend design. If you can’t optimize REST, you sure won’t be able to optimize GraphQL.
“Our frontend developers love GraphQL because it gives them more control.”
Your frontend developers also love bundling 10 MB of JavaScript and calling it a day. More control means more opportunity for abuse. Do you really want frontend devs dictating how your API performs? Most of the time, they don’t know or care about what’s happening on the backend. They’ll just fetch all the data because they can, and now your API is suddenly everyone's worst enemy.
“GraphQL lets us avoid over-fetching and under-fetching.”
Sure, but at what cost? You’re trading away predictable, manageable REST calls for complex, flexible queries that you’ll spend half your time optimizing. The problem of over-fetching and under-fetching can usually be solved by better API design, not by slapping a GraphQL layer on top of everything.
When You Actually Need GraphQL
Okay, GraphQL isn’t completely useless. It shines in very specific situations:
You have a very large and diverse client base with wildly different data needs. For example, if you’re building a public API that has to support multiple frontends, mobile apps, and third-party consumers who all want different slices of data, GraphQL can help you avoid building hundreds of specific endpoints.
You’re aggregating data from multiple sources—like microservices or different databases—and your API needs to present it in a unified way. But keep in mind: you should already be very comfortable with both GraphQL and microservice architecture before tackling this.
Your development team has the resources to handle the added complexity of managing a GraphQL schema, writing efficient resolvers, and monitoring query performance.
Conclusion: YAGNI (Most of the Time)
Unless you have a compelling reason like the ones above, you don’t need GraphQL. For the vast majority of applications, REST is simpler, faster to implement, and easier to maintain. You might feel tempted to dive into the deep end because GraphQL is shiny and new, but trust me: you’ll spend more time fighting its quirks than benefiting from its supposed advantages.
So before you join the hype train, ask yourself: do you really need it? YAGNI—You Aren’t Gonna Need It.