GraphQL

GraphQL is a query language for APIs and a runtime for executing those queries, developed by Meta. Rather than the fixed response structures of REST APIs, GraphQL lets clients specify exactly what data they want in each request - eliminating over-fetching (receiving fields you do not need) and under-fetching (requiring multiple requests to get all needed data).

A GraphQL API exposes a single endpoint that accepts structured queries. The client declares a query describing the shape of the data it needs, and the server returns exactly that - nothing more, nothing less. This makes GraphQL particularly efficient for frontend applications with varied and complex data requirements.

GraphQL is popular for product APIs where the front end has highly varied data needs. Most data APIs, including those for real estate and retail data, use REST rather than GraphQL because the fixed, well-documented endpoint structure of REST maps more naturally to data retrieval use cases.