title: Possible to reduce AWS Data Transfer cost by switching from HTTP API to gRPC service?
body: <p>I have a web service which handles a significant volume of traffic. This traffic can be in range of millions per minute. The service is hosted on AWS EC2 behind an ELB and uses HTTP APIs. This leads to a good chunk of AWS bill comprising of Data Transfer fees. The Data Transfer Out component is mostly higher since the 50% responses from web service are somewhat large and encoded as JSON in addition to SSL negotiations.</p>
  
  <p>Now gRPC payloads are smaller in size compared to similar data represented as JSON due to binary serialization. So it is possible to save upon the data transfer costs by switching from HTTP APIs to gRPC?</p>
  
  <p>I couldn't find any benchmark/article anywhere correlating AWS Data Transfer costs with HTTP APIs/gRPC services. Even 5-10% savings would be beneficial.</p>
  
  <p>PS: Here the clients accessing the web service are also mine. So it is possible for to make changes on both server side and client side.</p>