You picked WebSockets. Of course you did. It handles bidirectional communication, it's well-documented, and every tutorial for real-time features points straight to it. Six months later, you're debugging connection state issues under load, fighting proxy timeouts, and wondering why your infrastructure bill doubled.
The problem isn't that WebSockets are bad. The problem is that most teams treat them as the default answer to any question that contains the word "real-time," which is like using a full-duplex radio when you just needed a megaphone.
The Three Protocols Are Not Interchangeable
WebSockets, Server-Sent Events (SSE), and gRPC streaming solve fundamentally different communication problems. Treating them as a spectrum of options ranked by complexity gets you into trouble.
WebSockets open a persistent, bidirectional channel between client and server. Both sides can send messages at any time, independently. This is genuinely useful when the client is an active participant in the conversation: multiplayer games, collaborative editing, live chat. The handshake overhead is worth it when you're sending data in both directions continuously.
