REST / gRPC APIs

Lightweight overview of Pinot broker and controller APIs plus gRPC entrypoints.

Use Pinot APIs when you need programmatic access rather than a direct client library or BI connector. The main surfaces are broker query APIs for SQL, broker gRPC for higher-throughput query clients, and controller APIs for cluster and table administration.

What belongs here

Surface	Best for	Notes
Broker REST query APIs	SQL queries from applications or scripts	The broker exposes the query endpoints used by the query console and the standard SQL docs.
Broker gRPC API	Higher-throughput query clients	The gRPC surface supports binary transport and client-specific encoding or compression options.
Controller admin APIs	Cluster, schema, table, segment, quota, and task operations	The controller is the management surface and is what the Admin UI exposes through Swagger.

How to choose

Use broker REST if you want the most familiar query flow and do not need gRPC transport. Use broker gRPC when you care about client-side efficiency or want a gRPC transport layer. Use controller APIs when you are changing metadata or managing the cluster rather than querying data.

The detailed endpoint inventory belongs in Reference > API reference. This page stays intentionally light and points you toward the right surface instead of duplicating every endpoint.

Detailed docs

• API reference

• Broker Query API

• Query Response Format

• Broker gRPC API

• Controller API Examples

• Controller Admin API

What this page covered

This page covered the three programmatic API surfaces most users reach for: broker REST queries, broker gRPC queries, and controller administration.

Next step

Use the broker query docs for SQL access or the controller docs for metadata and cluster operations, then move to Reference for the full endpoint inventory.

Related pages

• Client libraries

• Querying Pinot

• Configuration reference

• API reference