A Comparative Study of REST, GraphQL, and gRPC for API Development : practical Benchmarking with a Trello-Like Task Management System
Reichersdörfer, Sven (2025)
2025
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2025120432525
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2025120432525
Tiivistelmä
State-of-the-art software systems increasingly depend on Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to enable interaction across distributed components and external services. Although REST has long been the dominant architectural style, alternative approaches such as GraphQL and gRPC have gained popularity due to their potential efficiency and flexibility advantages. The objective of the work was to compare these three API styles to identify their strengths and weaknesses in practical software development.
A task management application resembling Trello was implemented. The backend was developed using ASP.NET Core and SQLite, while the frontend was created with Blazor Server. The application supports the same functionality for the three APIs REST, GraphQL, and gRPC. The APIs were evaluated based on performance, developer experience, maintainability, and suitability for real-world use.
The evaluation showed that REST provided the most straightforward implementation and wide compatibility, GraphQL offered flexible data retrieval but added complexity to the setup, and gRPC achieved high performance and efficiency in communication but poses more challenges in debugging and the onboarding process.
Beyond performance metrics, this thesis provides a decision-making framework for developers, with specific criteria enabling them to select the optimal API architecture for their individual project constraints.
It was concluded that the most suitable API style depends on the context and requirements of the project. REST remains a reliable general-purpose choice, GraphQL is advantageous for data-driven applications with variable query needs, and gRPC is best suited for high-performance, service-to-service communication.
A task management application resembling Trello was implemented. The backend was developed using ASP.NET Core and SQLite, while the frontend was created with Blazor Server. The application supports the same functionality for the three APIs REST, GraphQL, and gRPC. The APIs were evaluated based on performance, developer experience, maintainability, and suitability for real-world use.
The evaluation showed that REST provided the most straightforward implementation and wide compatibility, GraphQL offered flexible data retrieval but added complexity to the setup, and gRPC achieved high performance and efficiency in communication but poses more challenges in debugging and the onboarding process.
Beyond performance metrics, this thesis provides a decision-making framework for developers, with specific criteria enabling them to select the optimal API architecture for their individual project constraints.
It was concluded that the most suitable API style depends on the context and requirements of the project. REST remains a reliable general-purpose choice, GraphQL is advantageous for data-driven applications with variable query needs, and gRPC is best suited for high-performance, service-to-service communication.