gRPC

gRPC makes a remote call look like a typed service method#

service UserService {
  rpc GetUser(GetUserRequest) returns (User);
}

A .proto service definition describes methods and messages. Tooling generates client and server code, Protocol Buffers provide a binary wire representation, and gRPC commonly uses HTTP/2 for concurrent calls and streaming.

Calls can be unary, server-streaming, client-streaming, or bidirectional streaming. Streams are useful for a long-lived logical flow, but add lifecycle, deadline, load-balancing, and failure-handling questions.

Choose from the consumers and operating environment#

Generated contracts improve consistency but make schema evolution and tooling part of the platform. Binary payloads are not as convenient to inspect manually. A small internal CRUD application may be better served by familiar HTTP JSON rather than adding another protocol.