Mass transit rail stations make up complex systems in which passenger flows have significant influence on operations and traffic conditions. Are there pedestrian simulators that can effectively contribute to the management of crowd flows? To answer this question, an assessment grid is built to address scientific principles as well as operational and organizational needs. The scientific principles encompass real-world features to be described, especially causalities to reproduce. The grid is applied to several commercially-available software (including PTVVisWalk, Legion, Anylogic, MassMotion and SimWalk) as well as to research-sourced pedestrian simulators.