Do I need reconciliation logic if the API already has webhooks?

Usually, yes.

Webhooks are great for event-driven updates, but they should not be treated as the only source of truth. You typically still want reconciliation logic because webhooks can be:

• Missed due to downtime, retries failing, or misconfiguration
• Delayed or delivered out of order
• Duplicated
• Incomplete if the provider doesn’t send every state change
• Unable to cover historical gaps after deployments or outages

Common pattern

Use both:

1. Webhooks for near-real-time updates
2. Periodic reconciliation / backfill to ensure your internal state matches the provider

When reconciliation is especially important

• Payments, subscriptions, and order fulfillment
• Any workflow where correctness matters more than latency
• Systems where webhook delivery guarantees are “at least once,” not “exactly once”

When you might get away without it

If:

• The data is low-risk
• The API guarantees very strong delivery semantics
• You can tolerate occasional inconsistency
• You have another trusted source of truth

But even then, a lightweight reconciliation job is usually a good safety net.

Practical rule

Treat webhooks as notifications, not as the full truth.
Use reconciliation to answer: “Did we miss anything?”

If you want, I can sketch a simple webhook + reconciliation architecture pattern.