Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Self-Hosted HTTPS Tunnel in 300 LoC with Go, Caddy, and Cloudflare
TL;DR: I built a lightweight, self-hosted HTTP tunnel that turns localhost into a public HTTPS URL. No paid plans, no secret black boxes. Just one Go binary, Caddy with wildcard TLS, and a $0/month Oracle Cloud VM. GitHub repo Why I Built It My development workflow lives mostly on a free Oracle Clou
A lightweight HTTPS tunnel solution built with Go, Caddy, and Cloudflare in approximately 300 lines of code. It enables developers to expose local applications securely over HTTPS without complex configuration. The… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier.
- 1
Pinggy▲282Public URLs for localhost without downloading any binary
2024 · pinggy.io · its alternatives →
- 2
Caddy is a powerful, enterprise-ready, open source web server with automatic HTTPS written in Go
2015 · caddyserver.com · its alternatives →
- 3
Hi HN, I have been messing around with WebRTC for a few years now but when it comes to the TURN server I never quite got to my gold standard of free, self-hosted and open source. I decided to give it a go using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure's free tier, meaning that my total spend got down to domain name hosting. I know plenty of people have been burnt by Oracle in the past, but I have had servers running on the free tier for 5 years now without so much as a hiccup. Regardless, the concepts will be the same using any cloud based server. This is the first time I've written up an end-to-end…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 4
tunnelto.dev▲186Expose localhost to the internet with a public URL
2020 · tunnelto.dev · its alternatives →
- 5
Pinggy is the simplest way to bring your localhost projects online. It the the fastest way to create secure tunnels to localhost with a public url.
2023 · pinggy.io · its alternatives →
- 6
The `boring` SSH tunnel manager. Contribute to alebeck/boring development by creating an account on GitHub.
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 7
wsgrok▲7I built it for myself because ngrok didn't let me add one more domain unless I paid $12 more. I probably should've looked for alternatives before building my own, but my grudge got in the way . Once I started, I wanted to make it better than the other options. Silly, I know. No one probably cares. I plan to open source it sometime next year because I’ve got other projects to finish first. It's free until I deplete my cloud credits, then it will switch to a tier-based model with a free option.
Jan 2026 · wsgrok.com · its alternatives →
- 8
Hi everyone, I recently published a small open-source project. It’s a minimal network packet analyzer written in Go — designed more like a learning toy than a replacement for Wireshark. It currently supports parsing basic protocols like TLS, DNS, and HTTP, and includes a tiny fuzzing engine to test payload responses. You can inspect raw packet content directly from the terminal. The output is colored for readability, and the code structure is kept simple and clear. The entire program is very small — just about 400 lines of Go code. I know it’s not anywhere near Wireshark’s level, and I still…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 9
Gopher gives you what Cloudflare gives you — TLS termination, automatic HTTPS, hidden origin IPs, and bot detection at the edge — except the edge is yours end-to-end. The built-in tunnel turns any device with outbound internet into a publicly reachable server. Open source, self-hosted, Apache 2.0.
Sep 2026 · gopherden.org · its alternatives →
- 10
Tunnelfy▲157Manage Cloudflare tunnels from VSCode
2025 · marketplace.visualstudio.com · its alternatives →
- 11PA
Hey HN! localtunnel's server needs random ports per client. That doesn't work on Fly.io or behind strict firewalls. We rewrote it in TypeScript and added multiplexing over a single port. Open-source and 100% self-hostable. Public instance at *.pipenet.dev if you don't want to self-host. Built at Glama for our MCP Inspector, but it's a generic tunnel with no ties to our infra. https://github.com/punkpeye/pipenet
Jan 2026 · pipenet.dev · its alternatives →
- 12
- 13
Hi Hacker News, I’d like to introduce PipeGate, a lightweight, self-hosted proxy built with FastAPI. I created PipeGate as a fun little exercise to understand how tunneling services work under the hood. PipeGate allows you to expose your local servers to the internet, giving you full control over your setup.
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 14
It's been 4 month since I work on Lokal full-time, I finally feel confident to share it publicly on YCombinator. Lokal is a software for Tunneling, Local Development, and HTTP Debugging, It's support HTTP, TCP and UDP Tunnel. The different with other tunneling solution is that Lokal has mDNS support with https enabled by default, while other might be only offer public-facing tunnel service. On the latest version 0.3.0, Lokal support Self-hosted Lokal Tunnel Server, which allow you to use your own domain and your own VPS, allow you to have Premium but self-hosted Tunneling Solution. Download…
2024 · lokal.so · its alternatives →
- 15
Simple, auditable & elegant VPN, built with TLS mutual authentication and TUN. - twitchyliquid64/subnet
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 16
Local development with .local domains and HTTPSfree tier, from $8/mo▲84Hi HN! I'm Jarek, and I've built this tool that allows publishing .local domains on the local network using mDNS. It also has a reverse proxy that handles HTTPS termination and port forwarding. I'm working on adding more features, like an index page with all available domains or allowing proxy redirects, so you could redirect from HTTP to HTTPS. Let me know if you have any questions or feedback!
2023 · localcan.com · its alternatives →
- 17AS
This is a proof of concept utility which allows you to expose local services to the internet at large: https://github.com/skx/tunneller In short it is a simple ngrok alternative, which you can self-host. Because it is a proof of concept it hasn't been tested extensively, but it seems like it will solve my immediate-needs. Of course it needs test, and structure added. But feedback can't hurt :)
2019 · its alternatives →
- 18
HTTPS domains for localhost. 🏠. Contribute to lufzle/localdots development by creating an account on GitHub.
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 19
Hey everyone. It's Sherub here, author of the Build your own DNS Server challenge on CodeCrafters. Currently it’s available in Rust, Go, and Python and is free while in beta. https://codecrafters.io/dns-server I've kept the challenge accessible but still challenging for an intermediate developer. This challenge, like others from CodeCrafters, is self-paced. You can use any tools you prefer (terminal, editor, etc.) to build the project. At the end of the challenge, you will have created a DNS forwarding server. The server can create and read DNS packets and respond to DNS…
2023 · app.codecrafters.io · its alternatives →
- 20
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 21
BoringSSL and nghttp2. Matches JA3N, JA4, and JA4_R fingerprints. Supports HTTP/2, async/await, and works with Cloudflare-protected sites. Not trying to compete with curl_cffi - just a learning project that turned into something functional.
Nov 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 22
DNS over HTTPS proxy written in golang. Contribute to satran/dohproxy development by creating an account on GitHub.
2018 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 23
Hey! I'm a solo developer having fun learning Go. I have a side hustle and wanted to implement currency localization. I could use existing IP databases, but hosting on serverless is slow. So I built my own. I was surprised how fun it can be to use Go, and it's fast. Thankfully, Go's speed makes up for my dodgy code. Anyway, I'd love to get some feedback on my website/API. After a few weeks of testing and losing money on ads, I'm confident it's very reliable. This isn't a promo. It's basicly free (30k lookups/month), so there's no need to pay. Any advice or tips on how to grow and…
2024 · ipflare.io · its alternatives →
- 24
Hey HN! For the past couple of months, I've been working on and off on a cool project I'm excited to share. mmar (pronounced "ma-mar") is an open-source, zero dependency, cross platform and self-hostable HTTP tunnel built in Go. It allows you to easily expose your localhost to the world on a public URL. You can easily create an HTTP tunnel right away for free on a randomly generated subdomain on "*.mmar.dev" if you don't feel like self-hosting. This isn't something new, in fact there's quite a few of alternative HTTP tunneling tools out there. mmar is my attempt to optimize for a super easy…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
Also compare
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →