grpcmd vs ProtoCall

grpcmd is a free command-line tool for working with gRPC services on Linux, macOS, and Windows. It can use reflection to find available services and methods, describe a method’s request and response messages, and make calls. Requests and responses can stream, with headers, data, and trailers included in output. Users who do not want to rely on reflection can instead provide.proto files and import search paths. The tool can also start a gRPC server implementing grpcmd.GrpcmdService with reflection, and its documentation covers shell completion for Bash, Zsh, fish, and PowerShell. A related tool, grpcmd-script, lets users define endpoint tests in JavaScript and assert response headers, data messages, and trailers; it is distributed as a binary and does not require Node.js. The separate grpcmd-gui desktop app supports reflection-based method lookup, request headers, response headers and trailers, JSON request templates, streaming, and themes. GUI downloads are available for macOS, Windows, and Linux, including amd64 and arm64 builds. grpcmd is listed at free; grpcmd-script is listed at $9 a year with early-bird pricing.

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.