Design Trade-offs in Public Web APIs: An Empirical Comparison of REST and GraphQL under Multi-Entity Access Patterns

• Valter Granato Neto UFLA
• Johnatan Oliveira UFLA
• Maurício Souza UFLA
• Neumar Malheiros UFLA

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/webmedia.2026.29731

Resumo

Web APIs are essential to modernWeb systems, but providers of public APIs cannot always anticipate how external clients will retrieve and combine related resources. API design choices can therefore affect response time, client-side composition effort, maintainability, and system evolution. This paper empirically compares three Web API design strategies for multi-entity data retrieval: resource-oriented REST, aggregated REST, and GraphQL. We implemented all alternatives using the same technology stack and database schema and evaluated them under 12 controlled scenarios varying the number of related entities and retrieved records. Results show that resource-oriented REST becomes inefficient when clients require multiple sequential requests to compose related data, while GraphQL reduces response time by retrieving nested data in a single request. However, when access patterns are known in advance, aggregated REST achieved lower median response times than GraphQL, with API-G being approximately 1.06 to 1.17 times slower across multi-entity scenarios. These findings reveal a key trade-off: aggregated REST favors efficiency for stable access patterns, whereas GraphQL provides greater flexibility for heterogeneous and evolving client needs. The study provides empirical evidence to support Web API design decisions balancing efficiency, flexibility, and evolvability.

Palavras-chave: Web APIs, API Design, Multi-Entity Data Retrieval, REST, GraphQL, Software Architecture Evolution

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