Thrift to me is a Protobuf clone. Very similar design. Early on it was not very well optimized compared to protobuf, but I imagine they've fixed that by now. The big advantage they had was that they included an RPC system in their first release -- although it was a FIFO RPC system which struck me as an odd design choice (I think they may have fixed this more recently?). But now GRPC exists, so I don't think there's much reason to choose Thrift over Protobuf/GRPC.

However, I am obviously very biased. :)