The debate about GraphQL versus REST is older than it feels. GraphQL was released in 2015. The loudest arguments about which was the right default happened between roughly 2018 and 2021, when GraphQL adoption was accelerating and a lot of teams were making architectural bets based on conference talks rather than production experience. By 2026, most of those bets have been played out. Some organizations that went all-in on GraphQL are still happy with the decision. Others have quietly migrated chunks of their API surface back to REST, or adopted a hybrid posture that would have been considered heretical in 2019. The debate is no longer theoretical, and the honest answer is more nuanced than either side was willing to admit during the peak of the controversy. This piece is about what the pattern looks like after a decade of production experience. Where each approach still wins, where each has lost ground, and what the right default is for a team making the decision today.…