TL;DR
Stefan and Jens introduced WunderGraph’s first State of Federation report. The key takeaway: federation is becoming an enterprise standard, but success depends on strong schema design and a diverse ecosystem of vendors. The report captures how organizations adopt Federation and what’s next as adoption accelerates.
Why a State of Federation report
Jens suggested the idea after seeing Postman’s State of APIs report. Stefan admitted he was skeptical because of market size but agreed the insights would be valuable. The final report drew on more than 1,000 developer and architect responses from the WunderGraph community.
This is jam-packed with information of why GraphQL Federation… it also includes the future of federation where we see federation going and why customers have been adopting it.
Adoption is accelerating
One of the most striking data points: Gartner® predicts that by 2027, over 60% of enterprises will use GraphQL in production, and 30% of them will adopt Federation — up from less than 5% today. Jens stressed that demand is expanding beyond Apollo’s ecosystem, with 80–90% of new Cosmo customers now coming from outside the Apollo base.
The market is expanding. There is a lot of traction, a lot of companies adopting federation.
Schema quality is the foundation
Jens emphasized that the most important factor in federation success is schema design. If schemas are built just to connect REST APIs, they risk leaking poor abstractions into the graph. A good schema, he said, enables companies to build great APIs and scale without legacy baggage.
The most important thing is the schema. The most important thing is to have a good and well-designed schema.
Competition keeps the ecosystem healthy
Jens also noted that large organizations often run Apollo Federation and Cosmo side by side. This diversity prevents monopoly, drives innovation, and strengthens the ecosystem overall. He argued that competition with Apollo has pushed improvements for everyone and reinforced that federation is becoming a true enterprise standard.
It’s important for a stable ecosystem that there is no one player, no monopoly, but rather multiple players in the market.
This episode was directed by Jacob Javor. Transcript lightly edited for clarity and flow.
