Alternatives
Products that do what tunnel.to does
Public URLs for localhost — outbound only, no firewall edits
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2020 · tunnelto.dev
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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
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2013 · ngrok.com
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Hi 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
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Pico is an open-source alternative to Ngrok. Unlike most other open-source tunnelling solutions, Pico is designed to serve production traffic and be simple to host (particularly on Kubernetes). Upstream services connect to Pico and register endpoints. Pico will then route requests for an endpoint to a registered upstream service via its outbound-only connection. This means you can expose your services without opening a public port. Pico runs as a cluster of nodes in order to be fault tolerant, scale horizontally and support zero downtime deployments. It is also easy to host, such as a…
2024 · github.com
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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
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2023 · pinggy.io
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A fast SOCKS5 proxy that tunnels your traffic through what looks like normal SMTP email, bypassing Deep Packet Inspection firewalls. How it works: - Client runs a local SOCKS5 proxy (127.0.0.1:1080) - Traffic is sent to server disguised as SMTP (EHLO, STARTTLS, AUTH) - DPI sees legitimate email session, not a VPN/proxy Features: - One-liner install on any Linux VPS - Multi-user with per-user secrets and IP whitelists - Auto-generated client packages (just double-click to run) - Auto-reconnect on connection loss - Works with any app that supports SOCKS5 Tech: Python/asyncio, TLS…
Jan 2026 · github.com
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I work on the OpenZiti project and I have a CI server that accepts GitHub webhooks, but I don't want to expose my server to the internet with open ports. I used the Python SDK for OpenZiti (overlay networking platform) to create a GitHub Action that sends the webhook to my private server via overlay instead of via the open internet. This GitHub repo is a template that I made to show you how it all works. You can use it right away to run the sample server (httpbin-go) and see the GitHub Action in...action. Relevant threads include https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32596212 .
2022 · github.com
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2019 · github.com
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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
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Give a local MCP server a public URL with one command. No accounts, no signup — anonymous, ephemeral, OAuth 2.1-protected tunnels for MCP servers.
5d ago · terragohan.github.io
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