Evans vs gRPC CLI

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.

gRPC CLI is a free, open-source command-line tool in the gRPC repository for inspecting services and calling remote methods. It can send unary RPCs, attach metadata to requests, display metadata received from a server, and handle common server authentication. With server reflection, it can list services and methods; when reflection is unavailable, local proto files can supply service definitions and request or response types. Requests can be read in proto text or wire form. Responses can be displayed as text or written to a file in wire form. Streaming RPC support is described as a desired capability, not part of the documented core functionality. The tool runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, but must be built from repository source. The documented process uses CMake and the `make grpc_cli` build target. Its documentation describes the tool as not yet up to par in user-friendliness and says grpcurl is better maintained in its current state. The gRPC repository identifies its license as Apache-2.0.