Evans vs GripMock

Evans is a free universal gRPC client for manual API inspection and scripting on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Its interactive REPL completes package, service, and RPC names. Stateless CLI mode reads standard input or files and prints JSON-formatted results. When server reflection is enabled, Evans can use that instead of proto files. It supports client-streaming, server-streaming, and bidirectional-streaming RPCs, plus gRPC-Web; TLS is not supported for gRPC-Web. The listed IDL and codec is Protocol Buffers 3, and the compressor is GZIP. For ordinary gRPC connections, the project documents secure TLS connections with the --tls option. Installation options include GitHub Releases, Homebrew, Docker, and Go, with Releases or Homebrew recommended for automatic updates. The documented Go installation requires Go v1.20 or later. The repeat option does not support client-streaming or bidirectional-streaming RPCs. Evans uses the MIT license.

GripMock is a mock server for gRPC services that returns responses defined in YAML or JSON without requiring a backend. It supports unary, server-streaming, client-streaming, and bidirectional calls. Stubs can match request inputs and headers using rules such as equals, contains, matches, anyOf, and glob; dynamic templates can form responses from request payloads, headers, and stream position. Stubs can also return gRPC status errors or delayed responses for timeout testing. The web dashboard lists used and unused stubs and allows them to be created, edited, or deleted while the server runs. GripMock loads .proto files or compiled .pb descriptors, including descriptors supplied to a running server, and can start from a Buf Schema Registry module reference. Deployment options include Docker, release binaries, Homebrew, shell scripts, and Go; a Go SDK embeds it in a test process. It also supports native TLS, optional mutual TLS, OTLP traces, a /metrics endpoint, and MCP endpoints for AI agents. It is free and MIT-licensed.