GraphQL: The hidden Champion of Postman's State of the API 2021 - WunderGraph
CEO & Co-Founder at WunderGraph
November 2, 2021·min read
Last updated on July 19, 2026
Archive Notice
This article is archived and no longer maintained. It analyzes Postman's 2021 State of the API report, which no longer reflects the current API landscape. The data and trends described are specific to that period. For current documentation and guidance, see https://wundergraph.com/cosmo
GraphQL shows strong growth, has the largest percentage of users who love it and is the only API Specification amongst future technologies that Developers are Excited about.
State of GraphQL Federation 2026
How are teams governing schema changes, handling production traffic, and measuring Federation success? Share your experience and get early access to the full report. For every valid survey completed, we'll donate $30 to UNICEF.
2020
| Specification | Use it |
|---|---|
| JSON Schema | 76% |
| Swagger 2.0 | 44% |
| OpenAPI 3.0 | 28% |
| GraphQL | 22.5% |
2021
| Specification | Use it | Use it and love It |
|---|---|---|
| JSON Schema | 77% | 27% |
| Swagger 2.0 | 54% | 16% |
| OpenAPI 3.0 | 39% | 12% |
| GraphQL | 31% | 10% |
Growth
| Specification | Growth |
|---|---|
| JSON Schema | +1.3% |
| Swagger 2.0 | +22.7% |
| OpenAPI 3.0 | +39.2% |
| GraphQL | +34.7% |
Lovers
| Specification | Lovers |
|---|---|
| JSON Schema | 35% |
| Swagger 2.0 | 30% |
| OpenAPI 3.0 | 30% |
| GraphQL | 32% |
Future Technologies 2020
| Specification | Excited about |
|---|---|
| Microservices | 47% |
| Kubernetes | 44% |
| Containers | 43% |
| Serverless Architecture | 39% |
| GraphQL | 33% |
| HTTP/2 | 25% |
Future Technologies 2021
| Specification | Lovers |
|---|---|
| Microservices | 58% |
| Kubernetes | 50% |
| Containers | 46% |
| Serverless Architecture | 44% |
| GraphQL | 35% |
| HTTP/2 | 33% |
Prediction
| Specification | Use it | Use it and love It |
|---|---|---|
| JSON Schema | 80% | 30% |
| Swagger 2.0 | 60% | 20% |
| OpenAPI 3.0 | 51% | 20% |
| GraphQL | 44% | 18% |
Jens Neuse is the CEO and one of the co-founders of WunderGraph, where he builds scalable API infrastructure with a focus on federation and AI-native workflows. Formerly an engineer at Tyk Technologies, he created graphql-go-tools, now widely used in the open source community. Jens designed the original WunderGraph SDK and led its evolution into Cosmo, an open-source federation platform adopted by global enterprises. He writes about systems design, organizational structure, and how Conway's Law shapes API architecture.