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When Does a BFF Earn Its Keep?

When does a backend-for-frontend earn its complexity — and when is it just another service to keep alive?

Practical scenario

The mobile team's home screen makes 9 sequential calls against APIs designed for the web app, takes 4.2s on LTE, and every field they need trimmed waits on another team's sprint.

What it tests

  • • The concrete problems a BFF solves (fan-out, payload shaping, client divergence)
  • • Honest accounting of its costs: ownership, duplication, another hop
  • • Alternatives that are cheaper for the same symptom