Database / Qdrant Vector DB Interview questions
What is the difference between REST and gRPC APIs in Qdrant?
Qdrant exposes the same core functionality through two API protocols simultaneously, and most official client libraries let you choose which one to use under the hood, trading off ease of debugging against raw performance.
| REST API | gRPC API |
| HTTP/JSON, human-readable, easy to debug with curl or a browser. | Binary protocol over HTTP/2, more compact and efficient. |
| Slightly higher overhead per request due to JSON serialization. | Lower latency and overhead, especially for large payloads. |
| Default port 6333. | Default port 6334. |
| Good for quick testing, scripting, and debugging. | Good for high-throughput production workloads. |
Because both APIs expose the same underlying operations, switching between them is largely a client configuration choice rather than a rewrite — the Python client, for example, accepts a prefer_grpc flag that routes calls over gRPC instead of REST without changing how the rest of the application code calls the client.
What is a typical benefit of using gRPC over REST for high-throughput workloads?
What is the default port for Qdrant's REST API?
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