GraphQL
GraphQL is a query language for APIs and a server-side runtime, created at Facebook in 2012 and open-sourced in 2015.
GraphQL is a query language for APIs and a server-side runtime, created at Facebook in 2012 and open-sourced in 2015. It offers an alternative to REST in which the client describes exactly what data it needs, in a single request, rather than chaining multiple endpoints.
A GraphQL API exposes a single typed schema; the client sends queries (reads), mutations (writes) and subscriptions (real-time) to a single endpoint. This eliminates the over-fetching and under-fetching typical of REST.
The ecosystem is mature in 2026: Apollo, Relay, urql on the client side; Hasura, PostGraphile, Yoga, Apollo Server on the server side. GraphQL is often compared to tRPC in end-to-end TypeScript architectures.