Alternatives to needle
Other tools in this directory that do similar work, with a verified install command for each. needle itself: install needle.
swift-protobuf
Plugin and runtime library for using protobuf with Swift
Microsoft Bot Framework Emulator
A desktop application that allows users to locally test and debug chat bots built with the Bot Framework SDK
ghidra
Ghidra is a software reverse engineering (SRE) framework
fabric-ai
Fabric is an open-source framework for augmenting humans using AI. It provides a modular system for solving specific problems using a crowdsourced set
catch2
A modern, C++-native, test framework for unit-tests, TDD and BDD - using C++14, C++17 and later (C++11 support is in v2.x branch, and C++03 on the Cat
katana
A next-generation crawling and spidering framework
pytest
The pytest framework makes it easy to write small tests, yet scales to support complex functional testing
re2
RE2 is a fast, safe, thread-friendly alternative to backtracking regular expression engines like those used in PCRE, Perl, and Python. It is a C++ lib
doctest
The fastest feature-rich C++11/14/17/20/23 single-header testing framework
NWPusher
OS X and iOS application and framework to play with the Apple Push Notification service (APNs)
molten-vk
MoltenVK is a Vulkan Portability implementation. It layers a subset of the high-performance, industry-standard Vulkan graphics and compute API over Ap
howard-hinnant-date
A date and time library based on the C++11/14/17 <chrono> header
blis
BLAS-like Library Instantiation Software Framework
keystone
Keystone assembler framework: Core (Arm, Arm64, Hexagon, Mips, PowerPC, Sparc, SystemZ & X86) + bindings
tsung
Tsung is a high-performance benchmark framework for various protocols including HTTP, XMPP, LDAP, etc
sourcekitten
An adorable little framework and command line tool for interacting with SourceKit
shunit2
shUnit2 is a xUnit based unit test framework for Bourne based shell scripts
yap
🗣️ A CLI for on-device speech transcription using Speech.framework on macOS 26
heatshrink
data compression library for embedded/real-time systems
curl
A command line tool and library for transferring data with URL syntax, supporting DICT, FILE, FTP, FTPS, GOPHER, GOPHERS, HTTP, HTTPS, IMAP, IMAPS, LD
leveldb
LevelDB is a fast key-value storage library written at Google that provides an ordered mapping from string keys to string values
lux
👾 Fast and simple video download library and CLI tool written in Go
folly
An open-source C++ library developed and used at Facebook
vegeta
HTTP load testing tool and library. It's over 9000!
How we picked these
We match on what the tool does and how it installs, then order by how widely each project is used. We're not saying these are better or worse than needle — that depends on what you're building. We're saying they're the projects people reach for in the same situations, and each one has an install command we checked against its documentation.
needle is developed by its own authors and this page is an independent reference; we are not affiliated with or sponsored by any project listed, and nothing here is a paid placement.