"Polling is repeatedly knocking on a door to see if anyone’s home. Webhooks are installing a doorbell that notifies you when someone arrives."
We just published a deep dive comparing webhooks vs. polling — not just the theory, but the tradeoffs teams face when building at scale.
- Polling: simple, reliable, but inefficient and often delayed.
- Webhooks: real-time and resource-friendly, but tricky to secure, monitor, and debug.
Curious to hear from HN:
1. Do you default to webhooks whenever possible?
2. Or is polling still underrated for certain use cases?
3. Any horror stories (or success stories) with either approach?
We just published a deep dive comparing webhooks vs. polling — not just the theory, but the tradeoffs teams face when building at scale.
- Polling: simple, reliable, but inefficient and often delayed.
- Webhooks: real-time and resource-friendly, but tricky to secure, monitor, and debug.
Curious to hear from HN: 1. Do you default to webhooks whenever possible? 2. Or is polling still underrated for certain use cases? 3. Any horror stories (or success stories) with either approach?