For years, RESTful APIs have been the default choice for backend development. But as applications scale, REST starts showing its limits - over-fetching, under-fetching, and inefficient network usage become real bottlenecks. Enter gRPC and GraphQL - two powerful alternatives that tackle API performance from completely different angles.

gRPC is designed for speed and efficiency, leveraging binary serialization, HTTP/2, and built-in streaming to enable blazing-fast communication between services. Meanwhile, GraphQL offers flexibility and control over data fetching, solving many of REST’s inefficiencies. But which one is right for your application? And when does REST still make sense?

What you’ll take away:
✅ Why REST struggles at scale - and how gRPC & GraphQL solve its biggest issues
✅ How gRPC’s binary protocol and multiplexed streams make APIs significantly faster
✅ When to use GraphQL for flexibility vs. gRPC for raw performance
✅ The trade-offs: simplicity vs. efficiency, tooling vs. control, JSON vs. Protobuf
✅ How to integrate gRPC into an existing Node.js backend with minimal friction

If you've ever felt that REST is holding your API back, this talk will give you the insights and tools to choose the best architecture for your next backend project - one that delivers both speed and scalability.