HTTP Clients vs gRPC

Developers should learn HTTP clients to interact with RESTful APIs, test web services, debug network issues, and automate data fetching in applications meets developers should learn grpc when building microservices architectures, real-time applications, or systems requiring low-latency, high-throughput communication, such as in cloud-native environments or iot platforms. Here's our take.

HTTP Clients

Nice Pick

Developers should learn HTTP clients to interact with RESTful APIs, test web services, debug network issues, and automate data fetching in applications

Pros

• They are essential for backend development, API integration, and quality assurance, as they simplify sending GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE requests and analyzing server responses
• Related to: rest-api, graphql

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

gRPC

Developers should learn gRPC when building microservices architectures, real-time applications, or systems requiring low-latency, high-throughput communication, such as in cloud-native environments or IoT platforms

Pros

• It is particularly useful for polyglot systems where services are written in different languages, as it provides language-agnostic contracts via protobuf
• Related to: protocol-buffers, http-2

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

The Verdict

These tools serve different purposes. HTTP Clients is a tool while gRPC is a framework. We picked HTTP Clients based on overall popularity, but your choice depends on what you're building.

The Bottom Line

HTTP Clients wins

Based on overall popularity. HTTP Clients is more widely used, but gRPC excels in its own space.