# Protocol Buffers (protobuf) Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/protocol-buffers/ 54 people recommended Protocol Buffers (protobuf) in Hacker News comments, 18 had mixed feelings and 59 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 10 of 12 months, in 28 threads. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** Slightly more people criticize it than recommend it. Schema-based binary format with compatible changes, compact messages and generated code in many languages. Critics cite language design flaws and that messages need the schema to read. Summary written by Claude from the comments below. ## What people warn about - Language design has known flaws (3 comments in the sample): "protobuf has accumulated enough problems that every large scale application will eventually run into a footgun or two" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46740261)) "protobuf, generally speaking, falls in the cleverness part, and certainly into the complexity part" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46112053)) "Sloppy open-domain protobuf field presence, enum values, whatever are illusory extension points." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50191645)) - Poor for small requests and browsers (1 comment in the sample): "It’s actually not well designed for small requests, and doesn’t even deal with versioning all that well." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48885772)) ## Why people recommend it - Compatible changes without breaking clients (5 comments in the sample): "protobuf has compatibility built in and you do not need to write anything to support outdated clients" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47842773)) "how neat and well-designed the wireformat is, in terms of backward/forward compatibility" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46741848)) "Forwards and backwards compatibility is well-specified across clients in all languages." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46404853)) - Generates code for many languages (5 comments in the sample): "allows to generate easy to use code for parsing defined data and services for many languages and is one of the faster and less bandwidth…" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46731048)) "LLMs already are very familiar with it, there are 100s of protoc plugin to generate code from it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46970604)) "Protobuf is fantastic because it separates the definition from the language." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46731373)) - Strict schema catches errors early (3 comments in the sample): "JSON allowing you to shoot yourself in the foot will take more time and effort to fix when it's corrupting data in prod" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46112304)) "When you have probabilistic models generating code, strict contracts become more critical, not less." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49322965)) "I think the strict schema of Protobuf might be one of the major improvements" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46111900)) - Compact, fast binary encoding (3 comments in the sample): "easy to work with, great size (esp compressed), random access, close-to-optimal parsing, extensible" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46731784)) "Protobuf simply encode things way more efficient that JSON can define a single object." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49323757)) "the en/de-coding speed is more important than the packet size in many situations" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46127132)) ## Other serialization formats people recommend - [Cap'n Proto](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cap-n-proto/): 18 recommend, 0 mixed, 5 criticize - [Serde](https://hackerapproved.com/p/serde/): 15 recommend, 4 mixed, 14 criticize - [Protobuf](https://hackerapproved.com/p/protobuf/): 12 recommend, 6 mixed, 23 criticize - [FlatBuffers](https://hackerapproved.com/p/flatbuffers/): 11 recommend, 4 mixed, 4 criticize ## The badge A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged. ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Protocol Buffers (protobuf)", https://hackerapproved.com/p/protocol-buffers/ (54 recommend, 18 mixed, 59 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026). Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.