Twirp

Twirp is a simple RPC framework built on Protocol Buffers, created by Twitch, that generates routing and serialization code from Protobuf service definitions for Go and other languages. Similar to gRPC but runs on the standard library's net/http Server without custom HTTP server or transport implementations. Supports both binary Protobuf and JSON serialization, making debugging easy. Uses HTTP POST for all requests with URLs in the format /twirp/[Package].[Service]/[Method]. Protocol version 7 is the current stable version. Licensed under Apache 2.0.

Twirp is listed with 1 API on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Protocol Buffers, RPC, Go, SDK, and Open Source.

The Twirp catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context and 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

Twirp’s developer surface includes documentation and 14 more developer resources.

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21.0/100 emerging ▬ flat Agent 1/100 human only self hosted · Apache-2.0 Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-10-23 · rubric v0.25.0 · Show this score on your site →

AccessFreemium

1 API

Protocol Buffers RPC Go SDK Open Source Protobuf

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-10-23 · rubric v0.25.0

Composite quality — 21.0/100 · emerging

Contract Quality 1.3 / 19

Developer Ergonomics 3.2 / 15

Access Clarity 1.2 / 15

Operational Transparency 2.6 / 10

Contract Governance 2.1 / 9

Discoverability 4.3 / 8

Regulatory Posture 0.7 / 15

Open Source Surface 5.0 / 10

Agent readiness — 1/100 · human only

Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Pagination 5 / 5

Distinct Operations 3 / 3

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Horizontal (data, software, accessibility, platform) regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Open Source Surface applies to this provider. This product is open source and we read its repository directly, so Open Source Surface carries 10 points of the composite. It is scored from what the repository actually publishes — a security policy, a contribution guide, a release history, a code of conduct — read live from the provider rather than inferred from our own catalog pointers. This facet adds; nothing was taken away to make room for it. An open-source project is not excused from the commercial facets, because exemption would strip it of the points it does earn. If we have the wrong repository, or this product is not open source, say so on your provider repo and we will drop the facet rather than have you publish against it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics could not be measured. We hold no machine-readable contract for this provider to read, so there is nothing to measure a write surface against. Excluded rather than scored zero: never-measured and measured-empty are different facts. Publishing an OpenAPI is what makes this facet — and several others — scorable at all.

The six quality facets above are damped to 75 points between them, because both conditional facets apply and carry 25 points together. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 75% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

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Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/twirp: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Markets this provider is in provisional

The Kin Score Market layer reads a provider inside its market: its position, and how deep its integrations go. Depth is only comparable within a position. Provisional and unweighted: not part of the Kin Score or agent readiness.

Market	Position	Depth	Registered MCP server	Declares compatibility
Buf Schema Registry (public Protocol Buffers modules, gRPC / ConnectRPC schema publishers)	undeclared	-	-	-

Registered MCP server and declares compatibility are report only — not weighted. Undeclared means we found nothing we can read, so there is no number: we never infer integrations.

Standards implemented 2

Standards this provider implements or carries. De facto ones are profiled and measured by the API Commons; formal ones come from the standards directory and are linked by the provider's own tags. The evidence column says how each claim was established — not that it was made.

Protocol Buffers

tagged — the provider's own APIs.json carries the standard as a tag; implementation not verified

RPC

tagged — the provider's own APIs.json carries the standard as a tag; implementation not verified

APIs 1

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Twirp RPC Framework

Twirp is a simple RPC framework with protobuf service definitions. Define your service in a .proto file and Twirp generates servers and clients implementing the Twirp wire proto...

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Twirp Plans Pricing

3 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Twirp Rate Limits

5 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Twirp Finops

FINOPS

Semantic Vocabularies 1

JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.

Twirp Context

0 classes · 5 properties

JSON-LD

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

Twirp — jsonschema rules

4 rules · 3 warnings 1 info

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 1

Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.

Twirp Error

3 properties

JSON SCHEMA

JSON Structure 1

JSON Structure definitions describing this provider's data shapes.

Twirp Error Structure

0 properties

JSON STRUCTURE

Resources

Documentation 2

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

JSONSchema

JSONSchema

Design & Contract 2

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

JSONLD

JSONLD

Vocabulary

Vocabulary

Build 2

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubOrganization

GitHubOrganization

GitHubRepository

GitHubRepository

Operate 3

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

RateLimits

RateLimits

IssueTracker

IssueTracker

Releases

Releases

Commercial 3

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Plans

Plans

FinOps

FinOps

License

License

Company 1

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

Other 2

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

Wire Protocol

Wire Protocol

Contributing

Contributing

Source (apis.yml)

aid: twirp
name: Twirp
description: Twirp is a simple RPC framework built on Protocol Buffers, created by Twitch, that generates routing and serialization
  code from Protobuf service definitions for Go and other languages. Similar to gRPC but runs on the standard library's net/http
  Server without custom HTTP server or transport implementations. Supports both binary Protobuf and JSON serialization, making
  debugging easy. Uses HTTP POST for all requests with URLs in the format /twirp/[Package].[Service]/[Method]. Protocol version
  7 is the current stable version. Licensed under Apache 2.0.
kind: contract
access: 3rd-Party
deliveryModel:
  model: self-hosted
  license: Apache-2.0
  license_evidence:
    repo: twitchtv/twirp
    spdx: Apache-2.0
    stars: 7530
  open_source: true
  commercial: false
  callable_host: false
  label: Self-hosted open source · you run it yourself
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - repository-license
  generated: '2026-09-25'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: freemium
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Freemium
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - plans
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/twirp.png
tags:
- Protocol Buffers
- RPC
- Go
- SDK
- Open Source
- Protobuf
tags_raw:
- Protocol Buffers
- RPC
- Go
- SDKs
- Open Source
- Protobuf
- Open-Source
created: '2026-03-27'
modified: '2026-05-03'
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/twirp/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: twirp:twirp-framework
  name: Twirp RPC Framework
  description: 'Twirp is a simple RPC framework with protobuf service definitions. Define your service in a .proto file and
    Twirp generates servers and clients implementing the Twirp wire protocol. Services are exposed over HTTP using POST requests
    with paths in the form /twirp/[Package].[Service]/[Method]. Supports both Protobuf binary encoding (Content-Type: application/protobuf)
    and JSON encoding (Content-Type: application/json). Includes a Go runtime and protoc-gen-twirp code generator plugin.'
  humanURL: https://twitchtv.github.io/twirp/
  tags:
  - Protocol Buffers
  - RPC
  - Go
  - Code Generation
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://twitchtv.github.io/twirp/docs/intro.html
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://twitchtv.github.io/twirp/docs/install.html
  - type: GitHub
    url: https://github.com/twitchtv/twirp
  - type: Wire Protocol
    url: https://github.com/twitchtv/twirp/blob/main/PROTOCOL.md
common:
- type: Plans
  url: plans/twirp-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/twirp-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/twirp-finops.yml
- type: IssueTracker
  url: https://github.com/twitchtv/twirp/issues
- type: Releases
  url: https://github.com/twitchtv/twirp/releases
- type: Website
  url: https://twitchtv.github.io/twirp/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://twitchtv.github.io/twirp/docs/intro.html
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/twitchtv
- type: GitHubRepository
  url: https://github.com/twitchtv/twirp
- type: Wire Protocol
  url: https://github.com/twitchtv/twirp/blob/main/PROTOCOL.md
- type: License
  url: https://github.com/twitchtv/twirp/blob/main/LICENSE
- type: Contributing
  url: https://github.com/twitchtv/twirp/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md
- type: JSONSchema
  url: json-schema/twirp-error-schema.json
- type: JSONLD
  url: json-ld/twirp-context.jsonld
- type: Vocabulary
  url: vocabulary/twirp-vocabulary.yml
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

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