# REST vs gRPC

Both REST and gRPC are protocols for communication.

REST is a way client-server communication based on HTTP/1 w/ GET, PUT, POST, DELETE, PATCH methods. Roy Fielding introduced with a set of concepts like cachability, stateless behavior etc.

References

{% embed url="<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer>" %}

{% embed url="<https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arch_style.htm>" %}

gRPC

[gRPC (Remote Procedure Call) is an open-source data exchange technology](https://www.baeldung.com/grpc-introduction) developed by Google using the [HTTP/2 protocol](https://www.baeldung.com/netty-http2).

**It uses the** [**Protocol Buffers binary format (Protobuf) for data exchange**](https://www.baeldung.com/spring-rest-api-with-protocol-buffers#1-introduction-to-protocol-buffers). Also, this architectural style enforces rules that a developer must follow to develop or consume web APIs.

RPC follows a client-response model of communication for [designing web APIs that rely on HTTP/2](https://www.baeldung.com/java-9-http-client). Hence, **gRPC allows streaming communication and serves multiple requests simultaneously**. In addition to that, **gRPC also supports unary communication similar to REST**.

{% embed url="<https://www.baeldung.com/rest-vs-grpc>" %}

{% embed url="<https://grpc.io>" %}

<https://dudewho.codes/talks/building-better-python-microservices-with-grpc/>


---

# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://til.kurianbenoy.com/programming/rest-vs-grpc.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.