I don't think #2 is that big of a deal if all requests happen async, which they should with a client side ORM, and if you're using http2. I think the bigger pr

I don't think #2 is that big of a deal if all requests happen async, which they should with a client side ORM, and if you're using http2. I think the bigger problem there is how those multiple REST calls map to your data stores. Very rarely will there be clean separation of data between endpoints, and the stateless nature of REST makes it harder to optimize each call -- meaning, there will almost certainly be redundant queries. That said, with GraphQL, your front end dev may not realize they are executing the equivalent of many REST calls, which is another problem :) I wouldn't say it's harder to optimize if you look at the application as a whole, though.