REST vs SOAP

Difference between REST and SOAP

Below table describes the difference between REST and SOAP:

PARAMETER	REST	SOAP
	REST is architectural style. It is more flexible.	SOAP is protocol. It is highly specified.
Industry Standard	No Official Standard	Has Official Standard
Focus	Focused on accessing named resources through a single consistent interface.	Focused on exposing pieces of application logic as server.
Documentation	Easy documentation	Complex documentation
Data Formats	Supports many formats	Only supports XML format
Performance and Scalability	Better performance and scalability
Caching	REST reads can be cached	SOAP based reads can’t be cached
Security	Supports SSL	Supports SSL in addition to XML signatures and encryption
Reliability	Limited to single HTTP transactions REST expects client to retry during connection failure	Ensure ACID transactions SOAP has successful/retry logic built-in
Areas of use	Where high security and high reliability is not critical	Where high security and high reliability is critical
Bandwidth Requirement	Require less bandwidth and resource than SOAP	Requires more bandwidth and resource than REST
Transport Layer	Tied to HTTP transport model	Both SMTP and HTTP are valid application layer protocols used as transport for SOAP
Error Handling	Built-in error handling	No error handling
Payload	No constraints on payload	Payload must comply with SOAP schema
Source: ipwithease.com