SOAP is a matured and stabilized protocol with a number of standard specifications, and these specifications are simplifying and streamlining the development, deployment, management, governance, and composition of services. There are standardized markup languages to represent the interfaces of services. In order to be unambiguously understood, SOAP predominantly uses XML rather than HTTP to define message content. Web services description language (WSDL) can enforce the use of formal contracts between the service API and consumers. SOAP has a built-in WS-reliable messaging standard to increase service security during asynchronous execution and processing. SOAP has a built-in stateful operation capability for conversational state management.

As indicated in the preceding section, REST is easy to understand as it uses HTTP as the data transmission protocol and the basic CRUD operations. This ease of use simplifies work for software developers. REST also consumes less network bandwidth as it isn't as verbose/bulky as SOAP. Unlike SOAP, REST is designed to be stateless, and REST responses can be cached at clients to guarantee better performance and scalability. REST intrinsically supports many data formats. The overwhelmingly used data format is JSON, which is capable of providing better support for web browsers and mini-clients. JSON's association with JavaScript simplifies the consumption of API payloads. RESTful services are becoming pervasive due to their lightweight nature. All kinds of cloud, mobile, embedded, and IoT applications are leveraging the REST paradigm, which is increasingly paramount for application, data, and UI integration requirements.