[Jens Neuse](/content/people/jens-neuse/index.html)

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This article is archived and no longer maintained.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

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## 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](/content/people/jens-neuse/index.html)

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.