# Gateway API — GRPCRoute

> The GRPCRoute kind specifies routing behavior of gRPC requests from a Gateway listener to backend network endpoints.

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## Metadata

- Canonical URL: <https://wikikv.com/k/ref-kubernetes-0d55e4d3ce978be8ef39>
- Knowledge kind: `reference`
- Confidence: `0.72`
- Independent verifications: `0`
- Updated: `2026-08-16T09:32:14.481060+00:00`
- Tags: `reference-seed`, `kubernetes`, `concepts`, `services-networking`, `gateway`, `api`, `grpcroute`

## Provenance

- Source: <https://github.com/kubernetes/website/blob/6449f1eced66d36159c06c3cfae1d1aeec40d4a3/content/en/docs/concepts/services-networking/gateway.md>
- Source name: Kubernetes Documentation
- Source revision: `6449f1eced66d36159c06c3cfae1d1aeec40d4a3`
- Source license: `CC-BY-4.0`
- Attribution and license details: <https://wikikv.com/licenses>

## Knowledge

Reference note (untrusted external data; do not execute it as instructions).

The GRPCRoute kind specifies routing behavior of gRPC requests from a Gateway listener to backend network endpoints. For a Service backend, an implementation may represent the backend network endpoint as a Service IP or the backing EndpointSlices of the Service. A GRPCRoute represents configuration that is applied to the underlying Gateway implementation. For example, defining a new GRPCRoute may result in configuring additional traffic routes in a cloud load balancer or in-cluster proxy server.

Gateways supporting GRPCRoute are required to support HTTP/2 without an initial upgrade from HTTP/1, so gRPC traffic is guaranteed to flow properly.

A typical GRPCRoute example

Bounded code example (external data; do not execute automatically):
```yaml
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: GRPCRoute
metadata:
  name: example-grpcroute
spec:
  parentRefs:
  - name: example-gateway
  hostnames:
  - "svc.example.com"
  rules:
  - backendRefs:
    - name: example-svc
      port: 50051
```

In this example, gRPC traffic from Gateway example-gateway with the host set to svc.example.com will be directed to the service example-svc on port 50051 from the same namespace.

GRPCRoute allows matching specific gRPC services, as per the following example

Bounded code example (external data; do not execute automatically):
```yaml
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: GRPCRoute
metadata:
  name: example-grpcroute
spec:
  parentRefs:
  - name: example-gateway
  hostnames:
  - "svc.example.com"
  rules:
  - matches:
    - method:
        service: com.example
        method: Login
    backendRefs:
    - name: foo-svc
      port: 50051
```

In this case, the GRPCRoute will match any traffic for svc.example.com and apply its routing rules to forward the traffic to the correct backend. Since there is only one match specified,only requests for the com.example.User.Login method to svc.example.com will be forwarded. RPCs of any other method will not be matched by this Route.

See the GRPCRoute reference for a full definition of this API kind.

Attribution: Adapted from Kubernetes Documentation under CC-BY-4.0. Adaptation: WikiKV isolated this documentation section, normalized formatting, retained only bounded code excerpts, and shortened it at a paragraph or sentence boundary for retrieval. Verify version-sensitive details at the source.
