gron vs JSONZen

gron is a free, open-source command-line utility that turns JSON into separate assignments with visible paths. This representation helps users grep values in large or deeply nested JSON, including responses from poorly documented APIs. Input can come from a file, URL, or standard input. The --ungron option converts assignments back into JSON, while --json emits a JSON stream. Other options provide value-only output, colored or monochrome display, line-by-line streaming, insecure certificate handling, and sorting control. The output is valid JavaScript, and the project demonstrates comparing JSON files by diffing their gron output. If array entries are missing, ungron inserts null values to preserve keys. gron has no runtime dependencies. Installation instructions cover binary downloads, Homebrew, and Go install. It runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows; plan information also lists FreeBSD binaries. The repository uses the MIT license.

JSONZen is a browser toolkit for formatting, validating, comparing, querying and converting JSON. Its tools also include minification, a tree view, JWT decoding and code generation for TypeScript, Zod, Pydantic v2 and JSON Schema. The site says core tools run in the browser and require no signup. Validation supports JSON Schema drafts 07, 2019-09 and 2020-12, with errors reported by path. Queries can use JSONPath and JMESPath; jq querying is listed as a Pro tool. Share links place their payload in the URL fragment rather than on JSONZen’s servers. Free share links allow up to 32 KB, and Free users can store three snippets locally per browser. Pro adds encrypted cloud-synced snippets, with manual syncing per snippet and a 2 MiB ciphertext limit per snippet. The listed Free plan is free, billed Forever. Pro is listed at $1.00 USD once for 30 days as a launch promotion, with no auto-charge; the pricing note lists paid plans from $5/mo. The CLI is included free.