SHSelfHostIndex

boringproxy 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.

Not the right match-up?
BO boringproxy Simple self-hosted reverse proxy and tunnel manager VS RA rathole Lightweight and high-performance reverse proxy for NAT traversal
Featureboringproxyrathole
Deploy effortUnder-an-hour setupUnder-an-hour setup
Health score15 · At risk75 · Good
CategoryRemote Access & VPNRemote Access & VPN
LicenseMITApache-2.0
LanguageGoRust
Setup difficultyEasyMedium
Min. RAM64 MB64 MB
Deploymentbinary, dockerbinary, docker
GitHub stars★ 1,384★ 14,252
First released20202021
Replacesngrokngrok, frp

What are boringproxy and rathole?

boringproxy

boringproxy is a simple but powerful tool for tunneling from a public server to a private machine, with automatic HTTPS. It is designed to be boringly reliable and easy to run.

  • Automatic HTTPS
  • Single binary
  • Web admin UI
  • Self-hosted tunneling

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

Read the full rathole guide →

boringproxy vs rathole: key differences

Boringproxy is written in Go, while rathole is built with Rust. Licensing differs — MIT for boringproxy versus Apache-2.0 for rathole. Rathole has the considerably larger community, at 14,252 GitHub stars versus 1,384.

Why pick each one

Choose boringproxy if…

  • Released under the MIT license
  • Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Active community (1.4k GitHub stars)
boringproxy details

Choose rathole if…

  • Tiny binary and memory use
  • Simple TOML config
  • Encrypted transport

Watch out for

  • Fewer features than frp
  • No web dashboard
rathole details

Frequently asked questions

Is boringproxy or rathole better?

Neither is universally better. rathole has the larger community, while boringproxy is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.

Are boringproxy and rathole free and open-source?

Yes. boringproxy is licensed under MIT and rathole under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run boringproxy and rathole with Docker?

boringproxy: yes. rathole: yes.

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