Is this behavior in api & integrations expected?

Strong agree. Good defaults beat a wall of toggles every single time.

For what it is worth, the same approach works with the PMPro adapter — the membership side is identical from here.

One caveat for larger communities: keep an eye on the indexes. At a few thousand rows the difference is night and day.

Following this thread closely. We are about to face the exact same decision and the replies here are gold.

I respectfully disagree on one detail. In my setup the opposite held true, though I suspect it comes down to community size.