API / Apollo Gateway Interview questions
What is the difference between a monolithic GraphQL server and a federated Apollo Gateway architecture?
Both expose one GraphQL endpoint to clients, but how that endpoint is implemented and who owns it differ substantially.
| Monolithic GraphQL server | Federated gateway architecture |
| One deployable containing the whole schema and all resolvers | Schema split by domain across independently deployable subgraphs |
| Simple to reason about and deploy at small scale | Adds a network hop and composition complexity, but scales better across teams |
| Every change goes through one codebase and one deploy pipeline | Each team can deploy its subgraph on its own schedule |
| Scaling means scaling the whole server, even for one hot area | Individual subgraphs can be scaled independently based on their own load |
The trade-off is real: federation trades some request-time simplicity and latency for organizational scalability. It tends to pay off once you have enough teams/domains that a single shared codebase becomes the bottleneck — it's rarely worth adopting purely for a small team with one clear domain.
What is a key organizational advantage federation offers over a monolithic GraphQL server?
What trade-off does federation typically introduce compared to a monolith?
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