Choosing the Right API

SOAP API

Use SOAP API to create, retrieve, update or delete records, such as accounts, leads, and custom objects. With more than 20 different calls, SOAP API also allows you to maintain passwords, perform searches, and much more. Use SOAP API in any language that supports Web services.

REST API

REST API provides a powerful, convenient, and simple REST-based Web services interface for interacting with Salesforce. Its advantages include ease of integration and development, and it’s an excellent choice of technology for use with mobile applications and Web projects. However, if you have a large number of records to process, you may wish to use Bulk API, which is based on REST principles and optimized for large sets of data.

Bulk API

Bulk API is based on REST principles and is optimized for loading or deleting large sets of data. You can use it to query, insert, update, upsert, or delete a large number of records asynchronously by submitting batches which are processed in the background by Salesforce.

SOAP API, in contrast, is optimized for real-time client applications that update small numbers of records at a time. Although SOAP API can also be used for processing large numbers of records, when the data sets contain hundreds of thousands of records, it becomes less practical. Bulk API is designed to make it simple to process data from a few thousand to millions of records.