“REST was familiar, but familiarity doesn’t scale.”

I didn’t switch to GraphQL because it was trendy. I switched because REST was no longer working for the way we were building applications.

Frontend teams were constantly blocked. Our APIs were bloated. Data fetching was inefficient. I got tired of managing endpoints that delivered too much or too little. So, I made the leap.

It made our workflow faster and cleaner—but not without breaking a few things along the way.

Why I Finally Switched

The tipping point was data flexibility.

Every new UI requirement meant tweaking an endpoint or creating a new one. That didn’t scale. With GraphQL, I could expose a single schema and let clients pull exactly what they needed.

Here's what that looked like:

REST (Multiple Calls):

GET /users/123
GET /users/123/posts
GET /posts/456/comments

GraphQL (One Query):

{
  user(id: "123") {
    name
    posts {
      title
      comments {
        body
      }
    }
  }
}

One request. One response. No over-fetching, no chaining.

What Got Instantly Better

Frontend Autonomy
Our frontend teams stopped waiting for backend changes. They built faster. They shipped more.

Fewer Endpoints
We went from managing dozens of routes to a single /graphql endpoint. Cleaner. Easier to maintain.

Precise Responses
We sent only what the UI asked for—no more, no less. Especially valuable on mobile where payload size matters.

Auto-Generated Docs
GraphQL’s schema became our source of truth. Tools like GraphiQL and Apollo Studio made onboarding seamless.

But Here's What Broke

Switching brought its own challenges—some expected, some not.

Caching Got Harder
REST used GET and HTTP caching naturally. GraphQL uses POST, so standard caching didn’t apply. We had to rethink performance and eventually relied on Apollo Client’s cache layer.

Authorization Became Complex
With REST, we applied auth at the route level. GraphQL forced us to implement field-level access control. That meant writing custom auth logic deep inside resolvers.

N+1 Query Nightmares
GraphQL’s nested queries triggered a flood of database calls:

{
  users {
    posts {
      comments {
        body
      }
    }
  }
}

Without batching, that quickly became N+1 hell. We fixed it with DataLoader, but only after performance tanked.

Error Monitoring Was Weaker
REST gave us clear HTTP status codes. In GraphQL, one query can partially fail and still return 200 OK. We had to build better tooling just to understand what broke and where.

Learning Curve Slowed Us Down
Resolvers, schemas, queries—it was new to most of the team. Productivity dipped during the learning phase. If you’re switching, plan for training and mentorship time.

What I’d Do Differently

If I had to start over:

  • I’d introduce GraphQL incrementally—maybe only for internal APIs at first.
  • I’d solve auth and caching early, before production rollout.
  • I’d educate the team before launch, not during.
  • I’d monitor query complexity and resolver performance from day one.

The Bottom Line

GraphQL isn’t perfect. It broke things. It forced us to rethink how we write APIs.

But it gave our frontend teams superpowers. It streamlined our backend logic. And it made scaling our product easier and faster.

If you’re feeling the weight of REST, GraphQL might be the upgrade you’re looking for. Just don’t expect a silver bullet. Expect trade-offs—and plan for them.

Also read: How I Replaced Python with C in My Project

Thanks for reading. If you're considering making the switch and want insight into how we handled the transition technically, feel free to reach out or drop a comment or contact us for website design services.