🚀 gRPC in Microservices: Go vs .NET in Real-World Projects
Phelipe Rodovalho
In recent months, I’ve implemented gRPC in both Go and .NET environments, building internal APIs for microservices running on Kubernetes. Here’s what stood out across both stacks:
✅ Key Benefits of gRPC:
Strongly-typed APIs with .proto contracts
Native HTTP/2 support (multiplexing, lower latency)
Built-in streaming (unary, server/client/bidi)
Auto-generated client/server code, reducing boilerplate and ensuring consistency
⚙️ Go vs .NET in gRPC Projects
| Feature | Go | .NET |
| Dev experience | Lightweight, fast builds | Mature tooling, strong IDE integration |
| Performance | Extremely low memory/CPU overhead | Very efficient with Kestrel + gRPC |
| Learning curve | Straightforward with idiomatic Go | Familiar to C# devs, but setup can vary |
| Tooling | grpc-gateway, buf | Visual Studio tooling, protobuf-net/grpc |
🛠️ Real-World Impact:
Switching from REST to gRPC in internal Go services resulted in:
⚡ ~50% smaller payloads
⏱️ 2-3x faster internal communication
🧼 Versioned, contract-driven design shared across teams
👀 Limitations:
gRPC isn’t always the best fit for public-facing APIs or mobile/web clients, where REST or GraphQL might still be a better choice.
However, for internal microservices communication, gRPC is a powerful tool — especially when paired with Go or .NET Core.
🔍 Bonus tip:
grpc-gateway (Go) and grpc-json-transcoding (.NET) make it easy to expose gRPC as REST endpoints.
👉 Are you using gRPC with Go or .NET? Share your experience!
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