bore vs rathole
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 | rathole |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 62 · Good | 75 · Good |
| Category | Remote Access & VPN | Remote Access & VPN |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Rust | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | binary, docker | binary, docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 11,506 | ★ 14,252 |
| First released | 2022 | 2021 |
| Replaces | ngrok | ngrok, frp |
What are bore and rathole?
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
rathole
rathole is a secure, stable, and high-performance reverse proxy for NAT traversal written in Rust. It is a lightweight alternative to frp with a small binary and low memory use.
- NAT traversal tunneling
- Tiny memory footprint
- Noise protocol encryption
- High connection capacity
bore vs rathole: key differences
Both projects are written in Rust. Licensing differs — MIT for bore versus Apache-2.0 for rathole.
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 rathole if…
- Tiny binary and memory use
- Simple TOML config
- Encrypted transport
Watch out for
- Fewer features than frp
- No web dashboard
Frequently asked questions
Is bore or rathole better?
Neither is universally better. rathole 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 rathole free and open-source?
Yes. bore is licensed under MIT and rathole under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run bore and rathole with Docker?
bore: yes. rathole: yes.