WebSockets vs. SSE vs. gRPC-Web: Choosing the Right Real-Time API Protocol

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Traditional HTTP/1.1 request-response models are poorly suited for real-time, low-latency applications due to redundant header overhead and connection inefficiencies. Techniques like short polling and long polling attempt to simulate real-time communication but waste significant bandwidth — potentially over 800 Mbps in header metadata alone for 100,000 concurrent users. Long polling also suffers from repeated TCP and TLS handshake costs, and risks port exhaustion on load balancers under high traffic. To achieve sub-10ms delivery latencies, engineers are advised to move toward persistent, full-duplex or streaming protocols such as WebSockets, Server-Sent Events, or gRPC-Web. Each of these approaches replaces stateless request loops with long-lived transport channels optimized for continuous, efficient data flow.

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