Comparing gRPC and REST API in search of a faster and more compatible architecture

Bazhenov A.E., Malenkova A.A., Maiorov N.V. Comparing gRPC and REST API in search of a faster and more compatible architecture. Scientific and Technical Journal of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics, 2026, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 517–524 (in Russian). doi: 10.17586/2226-1494-2026-26-3-517-524

Microservice architecture has become a standard approach to building highly loaded and evolving information systems. In digital educational platforms, compatibility of external interfaces and low delays of internal inter-service calls are important at the same time. The purpose of the work is to compare the Google Remote Procedure Calling (gRPC) and Representational State Transfer Application Programming Interface (REST API) in terms of response time and bandwidth metrics and formulate recommendations on choosing an approach for the analytics services of educational platforms. The object of the research is a mini-analytics service of the educational platform which, upon request, returns aggregated indicators of user actions for a given time interval. Two functionally equivalent versions of the service are implemented in Python with the same data model and identical business logic: a REST service based on Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) version 1.1, with data transmission in JavaScript Object Notation format and a gRPC service based on HTTP/2 with data transmission in Protocol Buffers format. The measurements were performed by load scripts on the client side with measurement of the full request execution time in the basic filtering scenario by user ID and interval. The tests were performed with 100, 200, and 500 simultaneous clients with a measuring window duration of 20 seconds. The average response time, 95th percentile latency, and throughput (number of requests per second) were used as metrics. According to the measurement results, with 100 simultaneous clients, gRPC provides lower average latency, while with 500 clients, REST demonstrates higher throughput and lower average response time. As the load increases, the 95th percentile of latency in gRPC remains lower than in REST, which indicates a more stable behavior of the “tail” of delays in conditions of high query competition. It is shown that the choice between REST and gRPC is not mutually exclusive: REST is convenient for public interfaces and integrations with external clients, and gRPC is rational to use for internal calls between microservices where overhead delays are critical and strict contractual specification is required. Recommendations on the choice of technology are formulated taking into account the load profile and integration requirements.

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