gRPC
The most recommended of 5 RPC frameworks
Recommended for typed service interfaces, generated clients and strong backend use across many languages; critics say it is heavy and poorly suited to browsers and plain HTTP.
Recommended for typed service interfaces, generated clients and strong backend use across many languages; critics say it is heavy and poorly suited to browsers and plain HTTP.
49 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 25
- criticize it
- 24
- approval share
- 51%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 25 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1 recommender for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 8 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
Typed interfaces and generated clients
“it already gives you a language for describing interfaces and support for generating client types from it”
Comment from 19 Apr 2026 in “One Interface, Every Protocol” “if you just want a nicely typed interface for your APIs, in my experience gRPC is much more useful”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “GraphQL: The enterprise honeymoon is over” “OpenAPI, Thrift and protobuf/gRPC are all far better schema languages.”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “GraphQL: The enterprise honeymoon is over” Strong backend and pragmatic choice
“gRPC which is insanely good for backend but maybe too demanding for web”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “GraphQL: The enterprise honeymoon is over” “gRPC is excellent and local first software can absolutely use it”
Comment from 21 Jan 2026 in “Nukeproof: Manifesto for European Data Sovereignty” “it wins in the "pragmatic" department”
Comment from 2 Dec 2025 in “Why I stopped using JSON for my APIs” Top-notch platform and language support
“The gRPC platform support is top notch and seamless”
Comment from 8 Apr 2026 in “Explore union types in C# 15” “C# gRPC story is really, really good, too.”
Comment from 15 Sep 2026 in “Java 27” Handles backwards compatibility well
“Protobuf in conjunction with gRPC can play wisely with the backwards compatibility feature”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “Why I stopped using JSON for my APIs” “gRPC forces you to confront them early and explicitly IMO, which is not a bad thing.”
Comment from 26 Jan 2026 in “Transfering Files with gRPC”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Heavy and weak in browsers
“But it would make it heavier and less browser-compatible.”
Comment from 29 Sep 2026 in “What if Jev spoke Arrow?” “gRPC which is insanely good for backend but maybe too demanding for web”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “GraphQL: The enterprise honeymoon is over” Awkward with Kubernetes and existing stacks
“My gripe with grpc is that it doesn’t play super well with kubernetes services”
Comment from 14 Feb 2026 in “gRPC: From service definition to wire format” “it's still a nightmare trying to integrate with gRPC from something remotely modern”
Comment from 17 Aug 2026 in “Protobuf has LSP support. You're welcome” Misses plain HTTP features like resumable uploads
“I understand some of the appeal of grpc, but resumable uploads and download offsets have long be part of plain http.”
Comment from 26 Jan 2026 in “Transfering Files with gRPC” “Splitting the response into blocks and having the client request the next block, as in the gRPC solution, causes round-trip delays.”
Comment from 26 Jan 2026 in “Transfering Files with gRPC” Bloated dependencies and messy ecosystem
“gRPC ecosystem is also not very uniform despite its popularity, comes with bloat, is a bit of a mess in Python.”
Comment from 23 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: S2-lite, an open source Stream Store” “there were like dozens of abseil .so's in the list IIRC. I don't like it!”
Comment from 14 Jun 2026 in “Orthodox C++”
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| gRPCThis page | 25 | 24 | 51% | 8 | — | — |
| ConnectRPC | 15 | 1 | 94% | 5 | — | Approved |
| tRPC | 12 | 2 | 86% | 7 | — | Approved |
| Apache Thrift | 8 | 3 | 73% | 5 | — | — |
| Varlink | 7 | 2 | 78% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 51 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“But it would make it heavier and less browser-compatible.”
“grpc seems like a more natural fit than arrow IPC and would give you the same benefits.”
“obviously went incredibly well”
“C# gRPC story is really, really good, too.”
“thus gRPC rediscovering CORBA, COM and Sun RPC”
“it expects to own the entire URL space at the IP/port in question”
“it's still a nightmare trying to integrate with gRPC from something remotely modern”
“This has been driving me crazy ever since I started using protobuf/grpc”
“It seems like Google focused on gRPC when the real prize for adoption would've been going after the HTTP+JSON use cases.”
“instead focused on gRPC which is its own thing”
“there were like dozens of abseil .so's in the list IIRC. I don't like it!”
“gRPC is easier as long as you obey the migration rules, but those impose tight restrictions on what you can change”
“results in thousands of connections and constant connection churn”
“it already gives you a language for describing interfaces and support for generating client types from it”
“The gRPC platform support is top notch and seamless”
“it was more performant in our testing than the gRPC when coupled with the backoff, failure cases”
“even high-tuned gRPC, the 'Serialization Tax' always wins”
“I came to believe that what you've described is basically "code smell"”
“My gripe with grpc is that it doesn’t play super well with kubernetes services”
“they strike a good balance between a number of indirectly competing objectives”
“gRPC/protobuf is largely a Google cult. I've seen too projects with complex business logic simply give up and embed JSON strings inside pb.”
“Too many rough edges and features I didnt really need.”
“some form of GRPC with C++ on the server side as well”
“gRPC forces you to confront them early and explicitly IMO, which is not a bad thing.”
“Splitting the response into blocks and having the client request the next block, as in the gRPC solution, causes round-trip delays.”
“I understand some of the appeal of grpc, but resumable uploads and download offsets have long be part of plain http.”
“I think gRPC and using it with json is awesome”
“gRPC and Avro will give you RPC with 5% of the wire bloat that XML does.”
“gRPC ecosystem is also not very uniform despite its popularity, comes with bloat, is a bit of a mess in Python.”
“gRPC is excellent and local first software can absolutely use it”
“solve for application layer semantics, merely wire protocol compatibility”
“if you just want a nicely typed interface for your APIs, in my experience gRPC is much more useful”
“OpenAPI, Thrift and protobuf/gRPC are all far better schema languages.”
“gRPC which is insanely good for backend but maybe too demanding for web”
“it wins in the "pragmatic" department”
“which is its own separate annoying thing that requires HTTP/2”
“Protobuf in conjunction with gRPC can play wisely with the backwards compatibility feature”
“95% is how to set up Bazel, gRPC, and building a C++ project.”
“The tooling is fantastic and extensible”
“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.