ASP.NET WebApi vs MVC ?

WebApi allows to create services that can be exposed over HTTP rather than through a formal service such as WCF or SOAP. Another difference is in the way how WebApi uses Http protocol and makes it truly First class Http citizen.

UPDATE: The ASP.NET Core, Web API has been integrated into MVC project type. The ApiController class is consolidated into the Controller class. More at: https://wildermuth.com/2016/05/10/Writing-API-Controllers-in-ASP-NET-MVC-6

A relevant link of comparison, discussions & tutorials:

• MVC5 vs WebApi Project
• Difference between ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web API
• Introduction to ASP.NET Core includes MVC, Web API demos
• Getting Started with ASP.NET Web API tutorials

WebAPI spits out OData, so you get all of the advantages of using OData. For example, with WebAPI you get:

• Query options such as $filter, $top, $orderby, etc.
  • With traditional MVC controllers you need to implement these yourself.
• Standardization of the format
  • There are OData clients that will understand the underlying format of your RESTful API.