When people might be comparing it to REST with JSON, it is fast.
gRPC can be used with flatbuffers and similar. The experience has been targeting protobufs, but at its core it just expects a serialized message. Other formats can be made to work with relatively low effort. So if protobuf is the issue, try swapping to your favorite marshaller.
gRPC can be used with flatbuffers and similar. The experience has been targeting protobufs, but at its core it just expects a serialized message. Other formats can be made to work with relatively low effort. So if protobuf is the issue, try swapping to your favorite marshaller.