websockets/wscat

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_releases

Adoption not part of the score

2772 stars · 250 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

wscat is a command-line tool for connecting to WebSocket servers (or acting as a WebSocket server) and interactively sending and receiving messages, similar to netcat for WebSockets. It supports TLS options, custom headers, proxies, subprotocols, and slash commands for control frames.

Use cases

• test a websocket server from the terminal
• debug websocket messages interactively
• connect to a wss endpoint with client certificates
• run a local websocket echo server for testing
• send ping and close control frames to a websocket
• connect through a proxy to a websocket endpoint

When to choose

• you need a quick terminal-based way to inspect or test WebSocket endpoints
• you want a lightweight netcat-like tool for WebSocket debugging
• you need to test TLS, headers, subprotocols, or proxy connections to a WebSocket server

When to avoid

• you need automated WebSocket testing in a test suite or CI
• you need a GUI client for exploring WebSocket APIs
• you need to load-test or benchmark WebSocket servers

Facets

cli-tool · maturity active

websocket http-client developer-tools cli developer-tools web-development apis cli cross-platform websocket-client websocket-server debugging netcat-style echo-testing command-line nodejs

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="websockets/wscat")