APIs That Push, Not Just Respond

REST is request/response — the client asks, the server answers. A realtime API pushes data as it changes over a persistent connection, which is a different system with its own scaling and failure modes.

Related but distinct. Event-driven architecture orchestrates async work between internal services. Realtime APIs deliver live updates to client applications. They often coexist.

It depends on whether you need bidirectional communication and your scale/client constraints. We select during discovery rather than defaulting.

Yes. A realtime layer commonly sits alongside an existing REST backend; we integrate rather than rebuild where that's appropriate.

That's the core of the work — fan-out scaling and backpressure are designed in, then validated with failure-mode testing.