From my experience (most with github’s graphql api), graphql is phenomenal for get queries as you can get a big chunk of things in a single request exactly as you want.

Github’s graphiql explorer was a joy to use and has saved me hours. For fetching a graph of nested data, graphql absolutely shines giving you fast responses of only the data you need.

For mutations though, graphql is a giant pain in the ass. We wrote a bunch of things using graphql mutations and after two months reverted all mutation code back to using REST api. GitHub was flakey, some things didn’t have error responses. Mutations would screw up encoding “ character and it was just painful.

REST api was much more deterministic and easier to work with. POST/PATCH/PUT/DELETE map well.

I wish graphql didn’t invent its own quirky language and stuck to good ol json.

In my experience graphql wasn’t worth the hype. There is a lot of over complication. We’ve got a lot more production success sticking to the basics.

NOTE: we were interfacing with github’s graphql api from python. Outside of js, graphql tooling is sparse and sometimes non-existent.