---
title: Welcome
description: Start here to learn about the Apollo platform
---

Hi there! 👋 We're excited you're here to learn about Apollo.

Apollo is a platform for building a **data graph**, a communication layer that seamlessly connects application clients (such as React and iOS apps) to back-end services.

It's easy to adopt Apollo incrementally, meaning you can set it up alongside an existing solution (such as a REST API) and migrate functionality at your convenience.

**The Apollo platform consists of:**

- [Apollo Client](https://apollographql.com/docs/react/), an open-source library for managing state in application clients

- [Apollo Server](https://apollographql.com/docs/apollo-server/), an open-source framework for implementing and running a data graph at scale

- [Apollo Graph Manager](https://apollographql.com/docs/platform/graph-manager-overview) (formerly Engine), a cloud service that helps you manage, validate, and secure your organization's data graph

- Developer tools that make it even easier to work with Apollo, including extensions for [Chrome](https://apollographql.com/docs/react/features/developer-tooling/#apollo-client-devtools) and [VS Code](/platform/editor-plugins/)

Conveniently, we have a tutorial that introduces you to each component of the platform. Ready to dive in?

import { ButtonWrapper, ButtonLink } from 'gatsby-theme-apollo-docs';

<ButtonWrapper>
  <ButtonLink size="large" color="branded" to="/tutorial/introduction">
    Try it out!
  </ButtonLink>
  <ButtonLink size="large" to="/intro/platform">
    Learn more
  </ButtonLink>
</ButtonWrapper>

![Graph layer](./img/platform.jpg)