ColdFusion GraphQL vs REST: When Each API Style Fits Your Architecture

For ColdFusion teams, the GraphQL-vs-REST decision has an important platform-specific wrinkle most generic comparisons miss. REST in ColdFusion is fully native on both sides — you build and expose REST APIs with cfcomponent rest="true" and consume them with cfhttp. GraphQL in ColdFusion is asymmetric: since the ColdFusion 2023 release, ColdFusion has a native GraphQL client (getGraphQLClient()) for consuming external GraphQL APIs like GitHub, Shopify, or a headless CMS — but ColdFusion does not yet natively expose your own data as a GraphQL endpoint (Adobe stated that capability is planned for a future release). To serve GraphQL from ColdFusion, you build it yourself with resolver CFCs plus a Java library (graphql-java) or a third-party CFML implementation. That asymmetry — native REST server + native GraphQL client + DIY GraphQL server — is the real decision axis for ColdFusion architectures, and this guide maps it out. (Note: the native GraphQL client requires Adobe ColdFusion 2023+ and is not supported on Lucee.)
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