You’ll find many performance benchmarks for REST with JSON vs. gRPC if you look around. Some of these show that gRPC reduces the latency per request by half.

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gRPC is faster than a JSON-based REST API primarily due to its use of HTTP/2 and Protobuf. HTTP/2 reduces request wait times through asynchronous requests and connection reuse. Protobuf, being binary-based, is more compact and faster during serialization/deserialization compared to JSON. While gRPC offers significant performance benefits, it also introduces complexities in load distribution, troubleshooting, and managing contracts. It's recommended for scenarios needing high performance and capable of handling its complexities, though REST + JSON remains a viable option.

Why is gRPC so much faster than a JSON-based REST API?

<p>Yeah, maybe it’s faster…but:</p>
<ul>
<li>its generated code is hideous to read and painful to debug through</li>
<li>having to deserialize objects before you can read their contents also makes debugging frustrating</li>
</ul>
<p>You win some, you lose some 🤷.</p>
