Charles vs Shields.io: What are the differences?

Charles: HTTP proxy / HTTP monitor / Reverse Proxy. Charles is a web proxy (HTTP Proxy / HTTP Monitor) that runs on your own computer. Your web browser (or any other Internet application) is then configured to access the Internet through Charles, and Charles is then able to record and display for you all of the data that is sent and received; Shields.io: GitHub badges as a service. Legible & concise status badges for third-party codebase services.

Charles and Shields.io can be primarily classified as "API" tools.

Some of the features offered by Charles are:

• SSL Proxying – view SSL requests and responses in plain text
• Bandwidth Throttling to simulate slower Internet connections including latency
• AJAX debugging – view XML and JSON requests and responses as a tree or as text

On the other hand, Shields.io provides the following key features:

• Have your own GitHub badges
• Visual consistency
• Look good on high-res displays

Shields.io is an open source tool with 8.53K GitHub stars and 2.01K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Shields.io's open source repository on GitHub.

Adorama, Freemake, and StellaService are some of the popular companies that use Charles, whereas Shields.io is used by Travis CI, Coveralls, and Movielala. Charles has a broader approval, being mentioned in 16 company stacks & 13 developers stacks; compared to Shields.io, which is listed in 7 company stacks and 11 developer stacks.