There are many differences between SOAP and REST web services. The important 10 differences between SOAP and REST are given below:
| No. | SOAP | REST |
|---|
| 1) | SOAP is a protocol. | REST is an architectural style. |
| 2) | SOAP stands for Simple Object Access Protocol. | REST stands for REpresentational State Transfer. |
| 3) | SOAP can't use REST because it is a protocol. | REST can use SOAP web services because it is a concept and can use any protocol like HTTP, SOAP. |
| 4) | SOAP uses services interfaces to expose the business logic. | REST uses URI to expose business logic. |
| 5) | JAX-WS is the java API for SOAP web services. | JAX-RS is the java API for RESTful web services. |
| 6) | SOAP defines standards to be strictly followed. | REST does not define too much standards like SOAP. |
| 7) | SOAP requires more bandwidth and resource than REST. | REST requires less bandwidth and resource than SOAP. |
| 8) | SOAP defines its own security. | RESTful web services inherits security measures from the underlying transport. |
| 9) | SOAP permits XML data format only. | REST permits different data format such as Plain text, HTML, XML, JSON etc. |
| 10) | SOAP is less preferred than REST. | REST more preferred than SOAP. |
