gRPC-Web
ELI5 — The Vibe Check
gRPC-Web lets browsers talk gRPC to your backend. Regular gRPC uses HTTP/2 features that browsers don't fully support, so gRPC-Web wraps it in a browser-friendly way with an Envoy proxy in the middle. It's gRPC with training wheels for the browser world.
Real Talk
gRPC-Web is a JavaScript client library and protocol that enables browser applications to communicate with gRPC services. Since browsers don't support HTTP/2 trailers natively, gRPC-Web uses an intermediary proxy (Envoy, grpc-web-proxy) to translate between gRPC-Web and standard gRPC protocols.
When You'll Hear This
"gRPC-Web lets our React frontend call gRPC services through an Envoy proxy." / "We chose gRPC-Web over REST for the dashboard because the typed client is way better than fetch."
Related Terms
Envoy Proxy
Envoy is a high-performance proxy built by Lyft that became the backbone of modern service meshes.
gRPC (Google Remote Procedure Call)
gRPC is like REST but on steroids and speaking a secret language only computers understand.
HTTP/2
HTTP/2 is a supercharged version of HTTP. With HTTP/1.1, you could only ask for one thing at a time per connection.
Protocol Buffers
Protocol Buffers (protobuf) is Google's way of serializing data that's way smaller and faster than JSON. You define your data structure in a .