apache/thrift

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

10953 stars · 4105 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

Apache Thrift is a lightweight, language-independent software stack for point-to-point RPC, combining an interface definition language, a code generator, and runtime libraries for transport, serialization, and protocol handling. It supports 28 programming languages, enabling interoperable clients and servers with non-atomic version compatibility.

Use cases

• build cross-language rpc services
• generate client and server stubs from an idl
• serialize data between services written in different languages
• upgrade server apis while keeping old clients compatible
• implement microservices communication across polyglot stacks

When to choose

• you need rpc between services written in different programming languages
• you want a mature, apache-backed idl with broad language support
• backward and forward compatibility across client/server versions matters

When to avoid

• you only need simple rest or json apis without an idl
• you want a modern single-language rpc stack like grpc with first-class http/2 streaming
• your team cannot maintain multi-language generated code

Facets

library · maturity stable

rpc serialization http-client http-server microservices apis developer-tools backend cross-platform cpp jvm python go rust dotnet php ruby idl code-generator microservices cross-language apache network-client network-server binary-protocol code-generation nodejs

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