| SOAP | REST |
| It is a protocol. | It is an architectural style. |
| SOAP- Simple Object Access Protocol. | REST- Representational State Transfer. |
| It can’t use REST because it is a protocol. | It can use SOAP because it is a concept and can use any protocol like HTTP, SOAP. |
| It uses service interfaces to expose the business logic. | It uses URI to expose business logic. |
| JAX-WS is the java API For SOAP web services. | JAX-RS is the java API For RESTful web services. |
| It defines standards to be strictly followed. | It does not define too many standards like SOAP. |
| It defines its own security. | REST web services inherit security measures form the underlying transport. |
| It is less preferred than REST. | It is more preferred than SOAP. |
| It requires more resource and bandwidth than REST | It requires less resource and bandwidth. |
| It permits XML data format only. | It permits different data formats such as HTML, XML, Plain text, JSON, etc. |