This paper presents an evaluation and comprehensive comparison for the topologies which are applied to the front stage of transformer-less cascaded multilevel converter (TCMC). The topologies investigated are targeted at the bidirectional cascaded H-bridge rectifier and three unidirectional rectifiers, including the diode H-bridge cascaded boost rectifier, cascaded bridgeless rectifier and cascaded VIENNA rectifier. First, the operation principles of the unidirectional rectifiers are discussed. Then the performances of these topologies such as power losses, efficiency, device current stress, cost, and total harmonic distortions are analyzed and evaluated respectively. Finally, advantages and disadvantages for each topology are discussed and highlighted. The evaluation and comparison methods presented in this paper and their results are feasible and effective for selecting the appropriate topology in practical applications under different operating conditions.