PipeGate – A Lightweight, Self-Hosted Proxy to Expose Local Servers
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.
PipeGate – A Lightweight, Self-Hosted Proxy to Expose Local Servers launched on December 17, 2024 with 33 votes, #582 of 5,365 launches that month and more than 90% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 1 year on.
In plain words
PipeGate is a lightweight, self-hosted proxy built with FastAPI that exposes local servers to the internet. Designed for developers who want full control over their tunneling setup, it works as an alternative to commercial tunneling services. The tool was created as an exercise in understanding how such services function under the hood and is available as open-source software.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
PipeGate is a lightweight, self-hosted proxy built with FastAPI. - janbjorge/pipegate
Expose a local server to the internet through a single WebSocket. No accounts, no cloud dependencies, no daemon -- just a server on your VPS and a client next to your app. ~400 lines of Python. [Any HTTP client] ---> https://yourserver/a1b2c3/api/data | PipeGate Server | (WebSocket) PipeGate Client | http://localhost:3000/api/data Quick Start git clone https://github.com/janbjorge/pipegate.git && cd pipegate uv sync export PIPEGATE_JWT_SECRET= " change-me-to-something-secret " export PIPEGATE_JWT_ALGORITHMS= ' ["HS256"] ' # Generate a tunnel token (21-day expiry) pipegate token # Connection-id: a1b2c3d4... # JWT Bearer: eyJhbGci... # Run the server (on your public VPS) pipegate server # Run…from github.com
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