RESTful APIs vs gRPC

Developers should learn RESTful APIs because they are the standard for building web services and enabling interoperability between different systems, such as in microservices, mobile backends, and public APIs 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.

RESTful APIs

Nice Pick

Developers should learn RESTful APIs because they are the standard for building web services and enabling interoperability between different systems, such as in microservices, mobile backends, and public APIs

Pros

• They are essential for creating scalable and maintainable applications that need to expose data or functionality over the internet, such as in e-commerce platforms, social media apps, or IoT devices
• Related to: http-protocol, json

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. RESTful APIs is a concept while gRPC is a framework. We picked RESTful APIs based on overall popularity, but your choice depends on what you're building.

The Bottom Line

RESTful APIs wins

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