bore vs frp
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted remote access & vpn options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | bore | frp |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 62 · Good | 100 · Excellent |
| Category | Remote Access & VPN | Remote Access & VPN |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Rust | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | binary, docker | binary, docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 11,506 | ★ 109,598 |
| First released | 2022 | 2016 |
| Replaces | ngrok | ngrok |
What are bore and frp?
bore
bore is a modern, simple TCP tunnel tool that exposes local ports to a remote server. It is a tiny self-hostable alternative to ngrok with just a few hundred lines of code.
- Minimal TCP tunnel
- Self-hostable server
- Optional secret auth
- Tiny codebase
frp
frp is a fast reverse proxy that exposes a local server located behind a NAT or firewall to the internet. It supports TCP, UDP, HTTP, and HTTPS tunneling.
- Expose services behind NAT
- TCP, UDP, and HTTP tunnels
- Single binary
- Encryption and compression
bore vs frp: key differences
Bore is written in Rust, while frp is built with Go. Licensing differs — MIT for bore versus Apache-2.0 for frp. Frp is the more established project (first released 2016), while bore arrived in 2022. Frp has the considerably larger community, at 109,598 GitHub stars versus 11,506.
Why pick each one
Choose bore if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Mature project with 11.5k GitHub stars
Choose frp if…
- Single lightweight binary
- TCP UDP HTTP tunneling
- Battle-tested and popular
Watch out for
- Needs a public server
- Manual config file editing
Frequently asked questions
Is bore or frp better?
Neither is universally better. frp has the larger community, while bore is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are bore and frp free and open-source?
Yes. bore is licensed under MIT and frp under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run bore and frp with Docker?
bore: yes. frp: yes.