March 7, 2025 - Use WebClient if you need a reactive, non-blocking approach. Use RestClient if you want a modern, easy-to-use alternative to RestTemplate without fully adopting WebClient.

February 7, 2025 - WebClient is for reactive development and RestClient is blocking and was proposed against the use of RestTemplate and many more clients were added to replace template based API like for JdbcTemplate we get JdbcClient

March 28, 2025 - Use RestClient for new Spring MVC applications where you don’t need fully reactive programming. Use WebClient for Spring WebFlux applications and cases where you need high concurrency and non-blocking behavior. Avoid RestTemplate unless you are maintaining a legacy application.

May 11, 2024 - RestTemplate uses Java Servlet API and is therefore synchronous and blocking. Conversely, WebClient is asynchronous and will not block the executing thread while waiting for the response to come back.

Mono<Thing> fetchThingWithWebClient(String thingId) { return webClient.get() .uri(uriBuilder -> uriBuilder .path("/thing/{id}") .build(thingId)) .retrieve() .bodyToMono(Thing.class); } Thing fetchThingWithRestTemplate(String thingId) { // getForObject() is a handy shorthand method for very simple HTTP calls // exchange().is more widely used for it's better flexibility return restTemplate.getForObject( UriComponentsBuilder.fromUri(URI.create(restTemplateBase)) .path("/thing/{id}") .build(thingId) .toString(), Thing.class ); } record Thing(String id, String name) { } } If you're writing something quick & dirty and not handling error response codes, but wanting to do simple things like: Deal with a list of objects rather than a single object · Add a query parameter to your call. then you'll find RestClient & WebClient easy to modify, but RestTemplate requires a change in method.

July 9, 2026 - RestTemplate is a synchronous HTTP client widely used in traditional Spring applications and legacy systems. WebClient is a reactive HTTP client introduced in Spring 5 that supports asynchronous and non-blocking communication.

June 16, 2022 - RestTemplate is the central class within the Spring framework for executing synchronous HTTP requests on the client side. WebClient is a reactive client for performing HTTP requests with Reactive Streams back pressure.

September 15, 2023 - From the above discussion, it is clear that the only big difference between WebClient and RestTemplate is their blocking nature. RestTemplate blocks the request threads while WebClient does not. We can use WebClient to make synchronous requests, ...

October 15, 2023 - 2. Blocking Calls: Can lead to inefficient resource use in applications with high IO or network calls. ... WebClient is a non-blocking, reactive web client introduced in Spring 5 as part of the Spring WebFlux module.

September 30, 2025 - The community raised concerns on several occasions regarding how HTTP clients are packaged in Spring artifacts. RestClient and RestTemplate live in “org.springframework:spring-web”, while WebClient lives in “org.springframework:spring-webflux”. None of those is shipped in a separate, dedicated client artifact.

February 9, 2026 - WebClient is the preferred way for future-proof applications, RestTemplate seems to stay here for a long though without any major feature addition.

December 27, 2020 - We already know the one key difference between these two features. WebClient is a non-blocking client and RestTemplate is a blocking client.

July 18, 2025 - Use RestClient if it's a new implementation or if you have time, migrate from RestTemplate to RestClient. WebClient is non-blocking, asynchronous reactive implementation.

August 15, 2024 - RestClient is a suitable choice when you need a balance between the simplicity of RestTemplate and the advanced features of WebClient. It’s recommended for projects that require asynchronous operations but don’t demand the full power of a reactive approach.

August 22, 2024 - Use RestTemplate if you're maintaining legacy applications and do not require reactive features. Use WebClient if you need a modern, non-blocking HTTP client with support for reactive programming.

April 24, 2026 - If you're starting a new project today and your code is synchronous — use RestClient. If you're doing reactive or truly async I/O — use WebClient. If you have an existing RestTemplate codebase — you don't have to migrate tomorrow, but ...

August 31, 2024 - HttpClient is part of the standard ... supports both blocking and non-blocking I/O models · RestTemplate is a synchronous HTTP client provided by the Spring Framework....