Complexity of the backend is much higher with GraphQL. Caching is much more difficult (not impossible) compared to REST. The client query system is bigger and

Complexity of the backend is much higher with GraphQL. Caching is much more difficult (not impossible) compared to REST. The client query system is bigger and more complex. So... Complexity generally is higher with GraphQL. Some data flows end up with dependencies you don't know when you build a query. Such as a auth token, credentials, etc. So you end up with several round trips anyway for these cases. A lot of the advantages to GraphQL don't materialize due to how front ends are built. It encourages the use of a global store to shove all data into from the large query you just completed. Except every front end I've ever worked on that used GraphQL basically used it just like REST with a few extra features because typical front end architecture encourages this. Taking little advantage of what GraphQL is suppose to offer. In my experience versioning was more painful with GraphQL than it was with REST. With REST you know you just need to rev the path or some other obvious marker like a header, which allows you to run both versions side by side. In GraphQL this isn't so obvious that you need to do the same kind of separation for braking changes. And breaking changes are occasionally needed contrary to what some people believe. So when I make a backend now, it's vanilla REST without anything fancy. I favor simplicity.