REST APIs vs. Microservices: Key Difference Between API and Microservices

When it comes to creating a microservices-based application, the RESTful APIs and Microservices work synchronously. Although the two of them work hand in hand, they’re entirely different. They refer to different things.

Microservices are the individual functions and services or the building blocks to create a large microservices-based application. RESTful APIs, on the other hand, are the rules, commands, protocols, and routines that amalgamate separate microservices to let them function as a single application.

Through this article, you’ll have an in-depth analysis of APIs and microservices. It’ll contain;

So, without consuming any additional lines, let’s get straight on to the point;

What is REST API/s?

A REST API, or a RESTful API, is an application programming interface that’s utilized by two computer systems to share information with security over the internet. The REST, here, stands for representational state transfer. There are business applications that need to communicate with other internal as well as different third-party applications to conduct multiple tasks.

For instance, when generating payslips, internal account systems in a company require to share data with their customer’s banking system intending to make invoicing and communication with an internal timesheet application automated. Because the RESTful APIs follow reliable, secure, and efficacious software communication standards, they assist the information exchanges in a safe and secure manner.

What is Microservices

Microservices, or Microservices architecture, is a set of services to design specific software systems to build applications making use of the collection of services. The idea for microservices is to separate the applications into pieces that are likely to work together. However, the architecture has grown in complexity; the microservices architecture still surpasses the monolithic architecture in terms of advantages.

Did you know around 37% of organizations who responded were said to use microservices in 2021.

Microservices architecture enables organizations to scale and update each service without interrupting other services in an application. Microservices create a scalable and distributed system that circumvents the bottlenecks caused by a central database to elevate a business’s capabilities. This requires planning and given much consideration before architecting or re-architecting software.

Difference Between REST API and Microservices

When it comes to the difference between API and Microservices, there are likely to be many. Microservices develop a single application making use of small, interconnected services competent in communicating via APIs. APIs, on the other hand, ensure seamless communication between a host and a requester. It provides products and services to make use of their data and functions via a documented interface.

While an application can consist of many microservices, each making use of an API to establish a connection with one another, APIs serve as an element that acts to conduct interaction among a variety of technology stacks. Look at the table below to gauge the difference between Microservices and REST API.

Pros & Cons of REST APIs and Microservices

Whether you are building a new application or migrating legacy systems to the cloud, knowing their dos and don’ts will help you become familiar with software development. After understanding the basics, like their kinds and differences, let’s compare REST APIs vs. Microservices based on their advantages and disadvantages. This comparison will let you understand how these two will be beneficial for your project and why you should opt to choose them.

Pros of REST APIs

Let’s take REST APIs first to examine in terms of performance and advantage!

Note: You should bear in mind that when you employ APIs, you can customize customers’ experiences, which can be a building block to your business success. For instance, you can opt to choose (AI) artificial intelligence-based APIs that’ll assist you in gauging your buyer’s journey. With this system, you can analyze a buyer’s journey right from when they visited the site to their completion of the purchase from there. The system backs you in mapping out the difficulties a customer encounters while making a purchase from your site to fix them with appropriate alternatives and make the process more convenient for them.

Cons of REST APIs

Similar to any other thing, the APIs undoubtedly have pros but have some challenges and drawbacks as well.

Pros of Microservices Architecture

Separating the app’s functions into small parts, microservices, too, has numerous advantages in store to offer its users. Here are some of them, if we name a few!

Cons of Microservices Architecture

Microservices are, indeed, an efficient approach that’s able to offer you a multitude of benefits; this, too, has some drawbacks that you should take a look at.

How REST APIs and Microservices Work Together?

Both APIs and microservices work together in an application. However, they exist separately; by using them together, an application will be able to assist companies in implementing the microservices architecture with ease. Many organizations may encounter hassle deploying microservices architecture when they already have an architecture launched.

Apart from that, the integration of several smaller and separate services and squeezing benefits from them wouldn’t be that easy. That’s why employing an integration strategy making use of APIs is of utmost significance to make the best of microservices architecture.

When using APIs, businesses will be able to leverage their full potential of it and achieve the next level of speed and flexibility. Microservices offers its users enhanced flexibility and incredibly accelerated speed while lessening the complexities associated with software development and deployment.

APIs Manage Microservices Effortlessly: Furthermore, APIs are capable of making it tremendously effortless to create and manage microservices, along with providing this innovative model to coexist with legacy systems with ease. In this way, an organization doesn’t need to discard all its legacy systems at once, and this is what circumvents them from tolerating stress caused by interruptions. Apart from that, you can expose microservices functions as products to enhance business value internally and externally.

Besides all these, APIs help you lessen the IT expenses for creating point-to-point integration between your legacy systems and SaaS applications. Following this way, you’ll be able to add or remove your microservices as per your needs quickly. The microservices also standardize traffic management, auditing, logging, monitoring, security, and many more. Therefore, combining microservices with APIs will let you achieve all the advantages of microservices by limiting their drawbacks.

Real-world Examples of Platform Leveraging REST APIs and Microservices Together

The familiarity, along with the reliability of RESTful API commands, protocols, and rules, makes it way easier to build applications with competencies to integrate with an application with an associated API. It becomes the case when companies, for instance, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and/or Salesforce, wish their services to be available to get integrated with third-party apps.

You can have an excellent example of RESTful APIs in action in the guise of the Facebook Messenger application. Messenger consists of a multitude of microservices, for instance, “Send” to send messages and “Attachment” to attach and send files. Facebook has published a multitude of RESTful APIs to let developers build third-party applications capable of integrating with these and additional messaging services.

Signing Off….!

That’s all there’s to it! That’s everything about the difference between API and microservice. We started from the very basics and left no aspect untouched from our intense analysis. First off, we learned RESTful APIs and Microservices architecture, then the difference between microservices and rest API, the pros and cons of both, and eventually, how APIs and microservices work synchronously.

We hope this article will serve you with the best possible; if you’re on the verge of building an application, get in touch with us– as we’re the best in class custom software development company creating groundbreaking solutions for businesses across the globe.