gRPC

gRPC (gRPC Remote Procedure Call) is a high-performance, open-source Remote Procedure Call (RPC) framework developed by Google. It enables client and server applications to communicate transparently, simplifying the creation of connected systems through automatic code generation for various…

Key facts

First appeared
2015
Category
technology
Problem solved
gRPC was created to address the challenges of efficient, reliable, and strongly-typed inter-service communication in distributed systems, especially as monolithic applications fragmented into microservices. It solves the pain points of managing untyped data (like JSON), high latency, and inefficient resource usage in traditional HTTP/1.1-based REST APIs, while providing first-class support for bidirectional streaming and multiple programming languages.
Platforms
Web (via gRPC-Web proxies), Linux, Android, iOS, Cloud environments, macOS, Windows

Related technologies

Notable users

  • Docker
  • Google
  • Many cloud-native startups
  • IBM
  • Netflix
  • Spotify
  • Square
  • Uber