Apache Thrift
Ranked 4 of 5 RPC frameworks by recommenders
Praised for cleanly abstracting data formats and transports, and for handling very large loads at Twitter; the most common caveat is poor documentation.
Praised for cleanly abstracting data formats and transports, and for handling very large loads at Twitter; the most common caveat is poor documentation.
11 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 73%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 2.7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Field numbers for serialization schemas
“the Protobuf/Thrift approach of using meaningless field numbers in serialization forms is better”
Comment from 10 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: Skir – A schema language I built after 15 years of Protobuf friction” “I very much prefer the Protobuf/Thrift model of using numbers to identify fields”
Comment from 9 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: Skir – A schema language I built after 15 years of Protobuf friction” “OpenAPI, Thrift and protobuf/gRPC are all far better schema languages.”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “GraphQL: The enterprise honeymoon is over” Abstracts data formats and transports
“The best system for this I've ever used was Thrift, which properly abstracts data formats, transports and so on.”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “Flow: Actor-based language for C++, used by FoundationDB” “Some standards had all of this settled from day one: I think Cap'n Proto, Avro and Thrift fit this description.”
Comment from 24 Jan 2026 in “The Lost Art of XML” Proven at Facebook and Twitter scale
“Facebook had no open source equivalent and didn't have Google's resources so they created Thrift and open sourced it.”
Comment from 10 Aug 2026 in “Mark Zuckerberg attacks 'closed' AI rivals as Meta returns to open models” “made Twitter stable under the load of several hundred million users”
Comment from 18 Aug 2026 in “Ask HN: GitHub employees what's going on? Why?” Works well as an RPC option
“many RPCs like zeromsg/nng, gRPC, Avro, Thrift, etc work just fine”
Comment from 16 Nov 2025 in “TCP, the workhorse of the internet” “we have Thrift and similar meaning the bar is definitely higher”
Comment from 9 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: Skir – A schema language I built after 15 years of Protobuf friction”
Other RPC frameworks people recommend
The four most recommended other RPC frameworks, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| gRPC | 25 | 24 | 51% | 8 | — | — |
| ConnectRPC | 15 | 1 | 94% | 5 | — | Approved |
| tRPC | 12 | 2 | 86% | 7 | — | Approved |
| Apache ThriftThis page | 8 | 3 | 73% | 5 | — | — |
| Varlink | 7 | 2 | 78% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
14 of the 15 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I'm pretty sure it's what killed Thrift.”
“made Twitter stable under the load of several hundred million users”
“it always had terrible documentation”
“Facebook had no open source equivalent and didn't have Google's resources so they created Thrift and open sourced it.”
“the Protobuf/Thrift approach of using meaningless field numbers in serialization forms is better”
“we have Thrift and similar meaning the bar is definitely higher”
“I very much prefer the Protobuf/Thrift model of using numbers to identify fields”
“Some standards had all of this settled from day one: I think Cap'n Proto, Avro and Thrift fit this description.”
“OpenAPI, Thrift and protobuf/gRPC are all far better schema languages.”
“network issues coming from Thrift RPC runtime apparently not handling anything well”
“Wanted to do unspeakable and evil things to people responsible to choosing it”
“making it open source in name (license) only”
“The best system for this I've ever used was Thrift, which properly abstracts data formats, transports and so on.”
“many RPCs like zeromsg/nng, gRPC, Avro, Thrift, etc work just fine”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.