Microservice architecture has become a popular way to build software systems. To effectively utilize this architecture, it is important to grasp the benefits as well as the drawbacks of the architecture. In this paper we study the current pains and gains of microservices as experienced by practitioners. Soldani et al. have already done a systematic grey literature review on this topic in 2018 and in this paper we repeat that previous study to understand the currently relevant pains and gains and how they have evolved.

The comparison to the original review revealed that pains related to the context of microservice storage are not as recognized as they were in earlier years, while the pains in microservice development, expecially complexity related, saw a dramatic rise from the original review. For microservice gains the benefits related to microservice design patterns and storage have become less significant, while the gains related to microservice development, such as development agility and technology freedom between services, are more relevant than they were at the time of the earlier review.