head to head · open source
grpc-gateway vs hurl
grpc-gateway has 20,001 GitHub stars, 2,409 forks, 149 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hurl has 19,203 stars, 745 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped yesterday. grpc-gateway leads on adoption by 4% (20,001 vs 19,203 stars). grpc-gateway is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause; hurl is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. grpc-gateway has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, hurl 4%. hurl was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| grpc-gateway | hurl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 20K | ★ 19K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 745 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick grpc-gateway if
- You weight community size — 20K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick hurl if
- You want the hurl feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and hurl fits your workflow better
About grpc-gateway
gRPC Gateway is a plugin for protoc , the Google protocol buffers compiler. It reads protobuf service definitions and generates a reverse proxy server that translates a RESTful HTTP API into gRPC. The generated server follows the google.api.http annotations attached to those service definitions, so a single set of protobuf services can be exposed in both gRPC and RESTful style at the same time. It lives in the gRPC ecosystem, is written in Go, and is distributed under the BSD 3 Clause license.
read the full grpc-gateway overview →
About hurl
Hurl is a command line tool that runs HTTP requests defined in a simple plain text format. It lives in the Rust ecosystem, is licensed under Apache 2.0, and is powered under the hood by libcurl, so it inherits curl's transfer behavior while adding a readable file format on top. A single Hurl file can chain multiple requests, capture values from one response, and reuse those values in later requests, which makes it possible to describe an entire HTTP session rather than a single call. The project has been on GitHub for six years and carries roughly 19,000 stars and 744 forks.
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Frequently asked questions
Is grpc-gateway or hurl more popular?
grpc-gateway has 20,001 GitHub stars and hurl has 19,203. grpc-gateway has the larger community by that measure.
Are grpc-gateway and hurl free?
Both are open source. grpc-gateway is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and hurl under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between grpc-gateway and hurl?
grpc-gateway is written in Go and hurl in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, grpc-gateway or hurl?
Choose grpc-gateway if you want the larger community (20,001 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose hurl if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.