Difference Between SOAP & REST

 

Difference Between SOAP & REST

	SOAP	REST
Stands for	Simple Object Access Protocol	Representational State Transfer
What is it?	SOAP is a protocol for communication between applications	REST is an architecture style for designing communication interfaces.
Design	SOAP API exposes the operation.	REST API exposes the data.
Transport Protocol	SOAP is independent and can work with any transport protocol.	REST works only with HTTPS.
Data format	SOAP supports only XML data exchange.	REST supports XML, JSON, plain text, HTML.
Performance	SOAP messages are larger, which makes communication slower.	REST has faster performance due to smaller messages and caching support.
Scalability	SOAP is difficult to scale. The server maintains state by storing all previous messages exchanged with a client.	REST is easy to scale. It’s stateless, so every message is processed independently of previous messages.
Security	SOAP supports encryption with additional overheads.	REST supports encryption without affecting performance.
Use case	SOAP is useful in legacy applications and private APIs.	REST is useful in modern applications and public APIs.