Live demo · Protocols

How APIs talk: REST, GraphQL, gRPC, WebSockets, SSE

Every API is two boxes and a wire. What changes between protocols is who is allowed to speak first, how many trips the wire has to make, and what the bytes look like. Pick a tab, click a button, and watch the packets travel.

Nothing here touches the network. Latencies, payload sizes and framing are simulated in the browser so the shapes are comparable, and the protobuf bytes are encoded for real from the values on screen. A runnable version of every scenario lives in the companion repo linked at the bottom.