BFF for Experience
One backend per experience, shaped by the screen rather than by the domain.
4 to work through
-
intermediate Multiple choice
Six product teams ship a web app and an iOS app against 23 domain services. A typical screen needs data from four to nine of them. Mobile releases take roughly three weeks to reach 90% of installs. Round-trip time on mobile networks is 60-150 ms. The platform team must pick one aggregation approach for the next two years. Which fits?
2 min answer -
intermediate
Your mobile BFF now contains pricing logic, entitlement checks and order validation. What has gone wrong?
2 min answer -
advanced
A team adds a backend-for-frontend per client - web, iOS, Android, partner. Latency and payload sizes improve immediately. What has been given up, and when does that bill arrive?
3 min answer -
advanced
A travel platform serves web, iOS, Android and partner integrations from the same services. When is a backend-for-frontend justified?
1 min answer
2 terms in this topic
Backend for Frontend
A dedicated backend per client experience, owned by the client team, that shapes and aggregates downstream services for that client's exact needs.
patternScreen Shaped Endpoint
An endpoint that returns exactly what one screen needs in one request, shaped by the interface rather than by the domain model.
Neighbouring topics
Frontend & Experience Architecture
General material on architecting the surface the user actually touches.
Rendering Strategies
Client, server, static and incremental rendering, and what each costs on first paint.
Edge Rendering
Running the render close to the user, and the personalisation and cache trade it implies.
Hydration Cost
The gap between visible and interactive, and the JavaScript that closes it.
Micro-Frontends
Independent deployment of UI slices, and the shared runtime that undermines it.
Module Federation
Loading code from another build at runtime, with versioning and failure to think about.
UI Monorepo Strategy
One repository for many front ends, and the build graph that makes it viable.
Design Systems
Components as a versioned internal product, with adoption and deprecation like any API.
Component Contracts
Props, slots and events as an interface, and the breaking change hidden in a style.
Client State Architecture
Server state, UI state and derived state, and why conflating them causes most bugs.
Client Caching & Data Layer
Stale-while-revalidate, invalidation and optimistic updates on the client.
API Shapes for UI
REST, GraphQL and RPC judged by over-fetching, round trips and client coupling.
Web Performance Budgets
A number a build can fail against, rather than a performance sprint once a year.
Core Web Vitals
LCP, INP and CLS — what they measure, and the architecture that moves them.
Accessibility Architecture
Semantics, focus management and announcements designed in rather than audited in.
Internationalisation
Locale, direction, pluralisation and dates as structural concerns, not string tables.
Client Feature Flags
Flag evaluation on a device you do not control, and the flicker and staleness it brings.
Real User Monitoring
Field data from real devices and networks, against the synthetic run that looked fine.
Frontend Security
CSP, XSS, CSRF, token storage, and the trust boundary that ends at the browser.