APIs in Real .NET Microservices: REST vs GraphQL vs gRPC

Everyone talks about APIs — but many teams treat them as “just endpoints”.

That’s how contracts get messy, transport leaks into business logic, and APIs become brittle in production.

In this video, I explain what an API really is: **a contract** between consumers and a system — including endpoints, request/response shapes, status codes, authentication, and standardized errors.

Then I break down why we use **REST over HTTP** in our .NET 8 microservices, and when **GraphQL** or **gRPC** would actually make sense.

We cover:

* What an API contract includes (beyond code)
* Why REST is the most interoperable standard for microservices and clients
* When REST is the best choice (simplicity, HTTP caching, easy contracts)
* When GraphQL makes sense (flexible queries, avoid over/under-fetching)
* When gRPC makes sense (high-performance service-to-service, low latency, streaming)
* The real conclusion:

* We chose REST because it optimizes interoperability and operations with APIM
* For internal high-performance or streaming, we’d evaluate gRPC
* For client-driven flexibility, we’d evaluate GraphQL

Видео APIs in Real .NET Microservices: REST vs GraphQL vs gRPC канала ocslegna