When Binary Beats JSON: The Case for gRPC in Mobile Backends

gRPC delivers significant performance gains for mobile APIs—60% smaller payloads and 30-40% faster serialization—but only when handling complex, repeated-field-heavy payloads. Simple CRUD endpoints may not justify the HTTP/2 overhead and toolchain complexity. The true win is schema-first design and unified code generation across Android, iOS, and KMP, which eliminates integration bugs at the contract level.