gRPC Swagger vs ProtoCall

gRPC Swagger is a free, open-source debugging tool for discovering and calling gRPC methods through Swagger UI. It uses server reflection to scan a registered endpoint, identified by host and port, and then displays available services, method definitions, and parameters. Users can invoke methods with Swagger UI’s “Try it out” control, supplying request data and headers as JSON; the headers are passed to the gRPC server as metadata. Reflection must be enabled on the gRPC service, but the setup instructions say proto files and related implementations do not need modification. The project runs from a released JAR or from source and defaults to port 8080. Configuration can show registered services and expire inactive registrations after a chosen number of seconds. Documented endpoints cover registration, service listing, method calls, and Swagger documentation. It is self-hosted, available for API and web use, and licensed under MIT.

ProtoCall is a cloud web app intended to simplify the steps of building APIs with gRPC. It runs in a browser without installation and organizes proto files into workspaces, where packages and imports resolve within one namespace. Users can create a workspace by importing proto files manually or bring in a GitHub repository they own, collaborate on, or can access through organization membership. Imports can track repository changes automatically. ProtoCall supports one repository per workspace, not a combination of repositories. The web app relies on ProtoCall Agent, a local webserver, for outbound requests that browsers cannot make directly because of CORS restrictions. The agent applies its own CORS rules and additional authentication to restrict communication from unauthorized non-browser processes. The agent runs through a Docker container on Windows and macOS, and as a binary executable on Linux. The Free plan costs nothing and supports GitHub imports and manually created workspaces. Listed platforms are Linux, macOS, web, and Windows.