Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

React VS gRPC

Compare React VS gRPC and see what are their differences

React logo React

A JavaScript library for building user interfaces

gRPC logo gRPC

Application and Data, Languages & Frameworks, Remote Procedure Call (RPC), and Service Discovery
  • React Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-19
  • gRPC Landing page
    Landing page //
    2024-05-27

React features and specs

  • Component-Based Architecture
    React encourages the creation of reusable UI components, which can be leveraged to build complex user interfaces efficiently. This promotes better code organization and separation of concerns.
  • Virtual DOM
    React uses a virtual DOM to optimize and accelerate the process of updating the browser’s DOM, significantly improving application performance.
  • Strong Community and Ecosystem
    React has a large and active community, which means plenty of third-party libraries, tools, and community support are readily available to assist developers.
  • JSX Syntax
    React’s JSX syntax allows developers to write HTML structures within JavaScript code, making the code more readable and easier to debug.
  • Unidirectional Data Flow
    React promotes a unidirectional data flow, which helps maintain the predictability and ease of debugging, especially for larger applications.
  • Extensive Documentation
    React's official documentation is comprehensive, well-organized, and provides numerous examples and tutorials to help developers get started and advance their skills.

Possible disadvantages of React

  • Steep Learning Curve
    React comes with a steep learning curve for beginners, especially those unfamiliar with JavaScript ES6 and JSX syntax.
  • Boilerplate Code
    Setting up a React project often requires boilerplate code, which can be cumbersome and time-consuming compared to simpler frameworks.
  • Fast-Paced Development
    React and its associated libraries evolve rapidly, necessitating frequent updates and learning new patterns, which can be overwhelming for developers.
  • Complexity in Larger Applications
    As a React application grows in size, managing state and props across components can become complex, sometimes necessitating additional state management libraries like Redux or Context API.
  • SEO Challenges
    React, being a JavaScript library, can present challenges for search engine optimization (SEO) due to Googlebot's limitations in executing JavaScript, although this can be mitigated with server-side rendering (SSR) or static site generation (SSG).

gRPC features and specs

  • Performance
    gRPC uses Protocol Buffers, which are more efficient in terms of serialization and deserialization compared to text-based formats like JSON. This leads to lower CPU usage and faster transmission, making it suitable for high-performance applications.
  • Bi-directional Streaming
    gRPC supports bi-directional streaming, enabling both client and server to send a series of messages through a single connection. This is particularly useful for real-time communication applications.
  • Strongly Typed APIs
    gRPC uses Protocol Buffers for defining service methods and message types, providing a strong type system that can catch potential issues at compile-time rather than runtime.
  • Cross-language Support
    gRPC supports a wide range of programming languages, including but not limited to Java, C++, Python, Go, and C#. This allows for flexible integration in polyglot environments.
  • Built-in Deadlines/Timeouts
    gRPC natively supports deadlines and timeouts to help manage long-running calls and avoid indefinite blocking, improving robustness and reliability.
  • Automatic Code Generation
    gRPC provides tools for automatic code generation from .proto files, reducing boilerplate code and speeding up the development process.

Possible disadvantages of gRPC

  • Learning Curve
    The complexity of gRPC and Protocol Buffers may present a steep learning curve for developers who are not familiar with these technologies.
  • Limited Browser Support
    gRPC was not originally designed with browser support in mind, making it challenging to directly call gRPC services from web applications without additional tools like gRPC-Web.
  • Verbose Configuration
    Setting up gRPC and defining .proto files can be more verbose compared to simpler RESTful APIs, which might be a deterrent for smaller projects.
  • HTTP/2 Requirement
    gRPC relies on HTTP/2 for transport, which can be problematic in environments where HTTP/2 is not supported or requires additional configuration.
  • Limited Monitoring and Debugging Tools
    Compared to REST, there are fewer tools available for monitoring, debugging, and testing gRPC services, which might complicate troubleshooting and performance tuning.
  • Protobuf Ecosystem Requirement
    Depending on the language, integrating Protocol Buffers might require additional dependencies and tooling, which could add to the maintenance overhead.

React videos

What Is React?

More videos:

  • Review - NOT Worth Buying? Nike EPIC REACT FLYKNIT 2 vs Epic React REVIEW
  • Review - NIKE REACT INFINITY RUN FLYKNIT REVIEW | The Ginger Runner

gRPC videos

gRPC, Protobufs and Go... OH MY! An introduction to building client/server systems with gRPC

More videos:

  • Review - gRPC with Mark Rendle
  • Review - GraphQL, gRPC or REST? Resolving the API Developer's Dilemma - Rob Crowley - NDC Oslo 2020
  • Review - Taking Full Advantage of gRPC
  • Review - gRPC Web: It’s All About Communication by Alex Borysov & Yevgen Golubenko
  • Review - tRPC, gRPC, GraphQL or REST: when to use what?

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to React and gRPC)
Javascript UI Libraries
100 100%
0% 0
Web Servers
0 0%
100% 100
Developer Tools
92 92%
8% 8
JavaScript Framework
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare React and gRPC

React Reviews

Top JavaScript Frameworks in 2025
ReactJS is a JavaScript based UI development library which is developed by Facebook. It is an open-source framework which is widely used by developers for web development. One of the major reasons why React.JS is widely popular is because it uses Virtual DOM. This enables developers to create web applications faster.
Source: solguruz.com
The 20 Best Laravel Alternatives for Web Development
React’s the cool kid on the block, turning heads since Facebook dropped it at our feet. Building dynamic user interfaces feels less like coding, more like crafting with this JavaScript library.
Top 9 best Frameworks for web development
React uses a virtual DOM to optimize the performance of UI updates and follows a one-way data flow for easy tracking of data changes. With its active community and abundance of third-party resources and libraries, React is a solid choice for web development.
Source: www.kiwop.com
9 Best JavaScript Frameworks to Use in 2023
React can be used as a base in the development of single-page or mobile applications. However, React is concerned with rendering data to the DOM, so creating React apps usually requires additional libraries for state management, routing, and interaction with an API.
Source: ninetailed.io
JavaScript: What Are The Most Used Frameworks For This Language?
Some of its top features include server-side rendering, automatic code splitting, client-side routing, built-in CSS support, static site generation and API routes. Overall, Next.JS is a powerful and flexible framework that provides developers with a simple and intuitive way to build complex React applications with ease. It is widely used in the React community and has a...
Source: www.bocasay.com

gRPC Reviews

SignalR Alternatives
SignalR is basically used to allow connection between client and server or vice-versa. It is a type of bi-directional communication between both the client and server. SignalR is compatible with web sockets and many other connections, which help in the direct push of content over the server. There are many alternatives for signalR that are used, like Firebase, pusher,...
Source: www.educba.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, React should be more popular than gRPC. It has been mentiond 813 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

React mentions (813)

  • Next.js Localization: How to Build a Multilingual Website with Next-Intl
    Next.js is a very popular framework built on top of the React.js library and it provides the best Development Experience for building applications. It offers a bunch of features like:. - Source: dev.to / 10 days ago
  • Web Development Using React Framework
    Explore the official React documentation. - Source: dev.to / 23 days ago
  • Monorepo Tutorial With Lerna, Storybook & Next.js
    We’ll be creating the components package inside the packages directory. In this monorepo package, we’ll be building React components which will be consumed by our Next.js application (front-end package). - Source: dev.to / 28 days ago
  • Migrating from AngularJS to React
    After evaluating our options including upgrading from AngularJS to Angular (the name for every version of Angular 2 and beyond) or migrating and rewriting our application in a completely new JavaScript framework: React. We ultimately chose to go with ReactJS. - Source: dev.to / 28 days ago
  • When & Why You Should Use React.js for Web Development
    React is a JavaScript library used for building fast and scalable user interfaces for websites and applications. It allows developers to create large web applications that can change data without reloading a page. React focuses on building the view layer of the website—the parts people see and interact with. - Source: dev.to / 28 days ago
View more

gRPC mentions (96)

  • Getting Started With gRPC in Golang
    gRPC is a framework for building fast, scalable APIs, especially in distributed systems like microservices. - Source: dev.to / 28 days ago
  • Should You Ditch REST for gRPC?
    Recently, I started working on extending the support for gRPC in GoFr, a microservices oriented, Golang framework also listed in CNCF Landscape. As I was diving into this, I thought it would be a great opportunity to share my findings through a detailed article. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Unlocking DuckDB from Anywhere - A Guide to Remote Access with Apache Arrow and Flight RPC (gRPC)
    Apache Arrow Flight RPC : Arrow Flight is an RPC framework for high-performance data services based on Arrow data, and is built on top of gRPC and the IPC format. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • JSON vs FlatBuffers vs Protocol Buffers
    Generally used in conjunction with gRPC (but not necessarily), Protobuf is a binary protocol that significantly increases performance compared to the text format of JSON. But it "suffers" from the same problem as JSON: we need to parse it to a data structure of our language. For example, in Go:. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • Performance and Scalability for Database-Backed Applications
    We can take the previously mentioned idea of partitioning the database further by breaking up an application into multiple applications, each with its own database. In this case each application will communicate with the others via something like REST, RPC (e.g. gRPC), or a message queue (e.g. Redis, Kafka, or RabbitMQ). - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing React and gRPC, you can also consider the following products

Vue.js - Reactive Components for Modern Web Interfaces

Apache Thrift - An interface definition language and communication protocol for creating cross-language services.

Next.js - A small framework for server-rendered universal JavaScript apps

GraphQL - GraphQL is a data query language and runtime to request and deliver data to mobile and web apps.

Svelte - Cybernetically enhanced web apps

Eureka - Eureka is a contact center and enterprise performance through speech analytics that immediately reveals insights from automated analysis of communications including calls, chat, email, texts, social media, surveys and more.