How to Use gRPC in Rust (tonic)

Crates/Tonic
2026-04-17T12:05:42+00:00
Use the tonic crate with Protocol Buffers to define and implement high-performance, asynchronous gRPC services in Rust.

Use the tonic crate, a gRPC over HTTP/2 implementation for Rust, to define services via Protocol Buffers and generate async client/server code. Add tonic and prost to your dependencies, compile your .proto files, and implement the generated trait to handle requests.

[dependencies]
tonic = "0.12"
prost = "0.13"
prost-build = "0.13"
tokio = { version = "1", features = ["full"] }

// src/main.rs
use tonic::transport::Server;
use tonic::Request;
use tonic::Response;

// Generated code from your .proto file
mod hello {
    tonic::include_proto!("hello");
}

#[derive(Default)]
struct MyGreeter;

#[tonic::async_trait]
impl hello::greeter_server::Greeter for MyGreeter {
    async fn say_hello(
        &self,
        request: Request<hello::HelloRequest>,
    ) -> Result<Response<hello::HelloReply>, tonic::Status> {
        let name = request.into_inner().name;
        Ok(Response::new(hello::HelloReply {
            message: format!("Hello {}!", name),
        }))
    }
}

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    let addr = "[::]:50051".parse()?;
    let greeter = MyGreeter::default();
    Server::builder()
        .add_service(hello::greeter_server::GreeterServer::new(greeter))
        .serve(addr)
        .await?;
    Ok(())
}