# DeepEval vs Gauge CLI

> DeepEval scores 61.9 (C) to Gauge CLI's 60.4 (C) for evaluations. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deepeval-vs-gauge-cli
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deepeval-vs-gauge-cli.md (~3,950 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-06

DeepEval scores 61.9 (C) on agent readiness against Gauge CLI's 60.4 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Gauge CLI leads on security & auth. Both do evaluations.

- DeepEval: grade C, 61.9/100, rank #526 of 1354. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/deepeval.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/deepeval.json
- Gauge CLI: grade C, 60.4/100, rank #590 of 1354. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/gauge-cli.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/gauge-cli.json
- Best agent tracing, monitoring and evaluation tools: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/agent-observability/index.md
- All 250 evals comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-observability/index.md

## Which one, for what

### DeepEval (C)

Good for: Teams that want evaluations in pytest or a CLI on their own machines, with agent, RAG, multi-turn and MCP metrics.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 78 against 60
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 40
- Transparency & trust, 66 against 53

Also in its favour:
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: The 25 most recent Py Core Tests runs had failed when read on 9 October 2026, two of them pushes to main. Issue #3372 of 26 September reports the same

### Gauge CLI (C)

Good for: Teams that build skills, CLIs, SDKs or MCP servers and want to see where coding agents get stuck with them, and to test fixes before release.

Ahead on:
- Security & auth, 55 against 47

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- No incidents deducted, where DeepEval loses 3 points for them

Watch for: Collects anonymous command usage by default, with an opt-out


## Why the edge

### Payments & pricing: DeepEval +20

- DeepEval (60): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). DeepEval is free, and the paid option is the hosted Confident AI platform, whose prices are public without a login. Starter is $200 a month, Team $2,000 a month, and trace spans beyond the plan are $1 per GB-month (20). The framework is free and Confident AI's Free plan needs no card (20). `pip install -U deepeval` and a local run need no account, so an agent can start without a person signing up. Confident AI itself needs a browser sign-up, and its auth.md says there is no self-serve registration endpoint for API keys. Scoring this line on the local framework is a judgement call (20).
- Gauge CLI (40): Scored on the hosted option. No payment protocol (0). Credit prices weren't found on the pages read (0). Local mode is free with no card (20). Local mode needs no sign-up (20). 0 + 0 + 20 + 20 = 40.

### Schema & documentation: DeepEval +18

- DeepEval (78): Read on the framework lines. The Python package ships `py.typed` and pydantic models, the TypeScript package ships type declarations, and the CLI is built on typer. A library has no OpenAPI file to publish (18). llms.txt on deepeval.com indexes the docs, and pages carry a Copy Markdown control (10). Each metric has its own page with required parameters and usage, and three agent skills in the repository tell a coding agent how to add evaluations and tracing (16). Typed test case and metric classes, with enums for evaluation parameters and CLI choices (12). Many runnable examples, a troubleshooting page and an environment variable reference. Error types are not listed in one place (11). Tagged releases for both packages and a public changelog by year, but the 2026 changelog still stops at 4.2.0 of 25 August on 2 November and has no entry for 4.2.1 to 4.3.2 (11).
- Gauge CLI (60): CLI reading. No machine-readable contract, -o json on read commands (10 of 25). No llms.txt; instructions bundled in the CLI for agents (5). The README says what it finds and when local or hosted fits (16 of 20). Commands with help text; typed flags (9 of 15). Worked examples, no error reference (8 of 15). Dated changelog and semver tags (12 of 15). 10 + 5 + 16 + 9 + 8 + 12 = 60.

### Transparency & trust: DeepEval +13

- DeepEval (66): Apache-2.0 for the whole repository (30). The docs state what telemetry collects, and Confident AI publishes terms, a privacy policy, a DPA and a sub-processor list with regions. They disagree in places. The privacy policy says the DPA is available on request while it is published at /dpa, and the DeepEval docs say data sits in a private cloud on AWS while the sub-processor list names Supabase, ClickHouse and Railway for storage and hosting (20). The changelog has Breaking Change sections and the source warns at run time about the reversed metrics and the legacy key file. No deprecation policy or notice period was found (9). Telemetry through PostHog is on by default and `DEEPEVAL_TELEMETRY_OPT_OUT=1` turns it off. The source also sends the judge provider and model, the runtime kind, the CLI command and test case counts, which the docs list omits (14).
- Gauge CLI (53): MIT (30). Local data stays in .gauge/ and telemetry fields are listed; hosted data handling wasn't read (18 of 30). Dated changelog, no deprecation policy (10 of 20). Telemetry on by default, disclosed with an opt-out (20). 30 + 18 + 10 + 20 = 78.

### Security & auth: Gauge CLI +8

- DeepEval (47): Local runs need no credential. Provider keys and `CONFIDENT_API_KEY` are read from the environment or a dotenv file, and storing keys in the legacy `.deepeval/.deepeval` file is deprecated in the source. Confident AI project keys take a name and an expiry and can be deactivated, rotated with a grace period or deleted. No per-permission scopes were found (20). The framework has no read-only mode. Once logged in, test runs and traces upload to Confident AI (8). Metrics pass application output to an LLM judge, and no guidance on untrusted content reaching the judge was found in the pages read (5). Each run is recorded in local JSON or SQLite. Confident AI documents audit log exports, which we did not read (7). GitHub shows no security policy and no published advisories, and security.txt answered 404 on both domains. No bug bounty was found. The Confident AI site states SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA, and its trust centre is drawn by script and was not read (7).
- Gauge CLI (55): Local tool. Agent credentials stay on your machine in local mode; hosted login with a device flow (20 of 30). Test agents run in fresh Docker sessions with injected inputs, and the gateway brokers credentials in hosted mode (12 of 20). Agents under test read your product's docs and outputs, with no prompt-injection guidance (5 of 15). Local transcripts and SQLite evidence per run (10 of 15). No security policy found (8 of 20). 20 + 12 + 5 + 10 + 8 = 55.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | DeepEval | Gauge CLI | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 59 | 60 | Gauge CLI +1 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 78 | 60 | DeepEval +18 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 72 | 75 | Gauge CLI +3 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 47 | 55 | Gauge CLI +8 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 40 | DeepEval +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 83 | 82 | DeepEval +1 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 66 | 53 | DeepEval +13 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -3 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **61.9 · C** | **60.4 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | DeepEval | Gauge CLI |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | SDK + MCP | cli |
| Vendor | Confident AI, Inc. | Gauge |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  |  |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache 2.0 for the Python and TypeScript packages and the agent skills. Confident AI, the hosted platform, is a proprietary service under its own terms | MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-28 | 2026-11-04 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Popularity | 19k stars, 35k npm/wk, 736k PyPI/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 2.8/5 (4) | none |

## How the scores have moved

### DeepEval

- -3.0 on 2 November 2026 (B to C): correction
- +0.2 on 27 October 2026: checklist

### Gauge CLI

No score change since it was listed.

## Verdicts

**DeepEval.** DeepEval runs evaluations and tracing locally under Apache 2.0 with no account, and writes each test run to JSON or SQLite. Release 4.2.0 reversed four metrics' score direction in a minor version without advance notice, the 25 most recent core test runs had failed on 9 October 2026, and the repository has no security policy.

**Gauge CLI.** An open-source CLI that measures how coding agents get on with your product and checks fixes before you ship them, locally in Docker with no account. It's young and pre-1.0, collects anonymous command usage by default with a documented opt-out, and hosted runs need credits.

## Before you call either

### DeepEval

1. Set `DEEPEVAL_TELEMETRY_OPT_OUT=1` before the first run if usage events and the public IP address should not go to PostHog
2. Set a judge model key such as `OPENAI_API_KEY`, or use the non-LLM metrics. Most metrics call an LLM judge and bill the owner's provider account
3. Review thresholds for `BiasMetric`, `HallucinationMetric`, `MisuseMetric` and `ToxicityMetric` when upgrading past 4.2.0. Higher scores now mean better, so a 0.2 maximum becomes a 0.8 minimum
4. Read results from `.deepeval/.latest_run_full.json` or a `results_folder`. `deepeval inspect` opens a terminal interface meant for a person
5. Pass an existing key with `deepeval login --api-key` in CI. Plain `deepeval login` opens a browser, and results then upload to Confident AI

### Gauge CLI

1. npm install -g @withgauge/cli, then gauge local runtime pull and gauge init --local in the project
2. Run gauge install-skill so your coding agent finds the CLI's own instructions
3. Set GAUGE_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=1 in CI if you don't want command usage collected
4. Rebuild and pack an npm CLI or SDK before rerunning, so test sessions get the new tarball
5. Keep .gauge/ private; it holds measurements and analyses

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, DeepEval or Gauge CLI?

DeepEval scores 61.9 (C) on agent readiness against Gauge CLI's 60.4 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Gauge CLI leads on security & auth.

### Are DeepEval and Gauge CLI open source?

Yes. DeepEval is open source (Apache 2.0 for the Python and TypeScript packages and the agent skills. Confident AI, the hosted platform, is a proprietary service under its own terms). Gauge CLI is open source (MIT).


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deepeval-vs-gauge-cli.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deepeval-vs-gauge-cli.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "deepeval", "b": "gauge-cli"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare deepeval gauge-cli`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/deepeval.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/gauge-cli.json

## Other comparisons with DeepEval or Gauge CLI

- [Agent Tree vs DeepEval](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-tree-vs-deepeval.md)
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