# Netflix/ribbon

Ribbon is a Inter Process Communication (remote procedure calls) library with built in software load balancers. The primary usage model involves REST calls with various serialization scheme support.

Repository: https://github.com/Netflix/ribbon
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/ribbon
Language: Java
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2025-12-17T00:32:09+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 48/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 57, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4979, "days_push": 260, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 4615, forks 1226 (observed 2026-08-28T04:08:55.118330+00:00)

## What it is
Ribbon is a JVM client-side inter-process communication (RPC) library with built-in software load balancers, battle-tested in Netflix's cloud. It supports REST calls with multiple serialization schemes, multiple protocols (HTTP, TCP, UDP), fault tolerance, and caching/batching.

## Use cases
- client-side load balancing for microservice calls
- fault-tolerant REST calls across service instances
- dynamic server list discovery with Eureka
- caching and batching of IPC requests
- async reactive HTTP/TCP/UDP transport clients

## When to choose
- you're on the JVM and already invested in Netflix OSS (Eureka, Hystrix)
- you need a stable, production-proven client-side load balancer
- you only need the loadbalancer or eureka modules that remain in production

## When to avoid
- starting a new project - it's in maintenance mode with no new features
- you need modern reactive RPC - consider newer alternatives like Spring Cloud LoadBalancer or gRPC
- you need the ribbon-transport or top-level ribbon modules, which Netflix no longer uses

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: maintenance
- function: rpc, http-client, middleware, caching
- domain: microservices, backend, cloud-computing
- platform: jvm, cross-platform
- tags: load-balancing, client-side-load-balancer, fault-tolerance, eureka, netflix-oss, rest-client, service-discovery

## Member repositories
- Netflix/ribbon (main) score 48

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:55.118330+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T18:19:40.610880+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/Netflix/ribbon (fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:55.118330+00:00, sha 2a38bf1877bb)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.