gRPC Patterns

Binary RPC framework built on HTTP/2. Use when you need: strong typing between services, bi-directional streaming, or high-throughput service-to-service calls.

When to Activate

• Designing service-to-service internal APIs (not public-facing)
• Need bi-directional streaming (chat, live data feeds, multiplayer)
• Performance-critical service calls (gRPC is ~10x smaller than JSON)
• Building microservices that need a strongly-typed contract
• Replacing REST endpoints between internal services
• Versioning a proto schema safely after an already-deployed service has external consumers
• Setting up buf lint and buf breaking checks in CI to prevent accidental wire-incompatible changes
• Choosing between unary, server-streaming, client-streaming, and bidirectional streaming for a new RPC method

gRPC vs REST — Decision