Chisel vs expose
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted remote access & vpn options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Chisel | expose |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 95 · Excellent | 89 · Excellent |
| Category | Remote Access & VPN | Remote Access & VPN |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Language | Go | PHP |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | binary, docker | bare-metal, docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 16,570 | ★ 4,574 |
| First released | 2015 | 2020 |
| Replaces | ngrok | ngrok |
What are Chisel and expose?
Chisel
Chisel is a fast TCP and UDP tunnel transported over HTTP and secured with SSH. It is a single executable that helps bypass firewalls and provide secure endpoints.
- TCP/UDP over HTTP
- SSH-secured tunnels
- Single binary
- Firewall traversal
expose
expose is an open-source, PHP-based tunneling tool that shares local websites with anyone via a secure public URL. The server can be fully self-hosted on your own domain.
- Self-hosted tunnel server
- Custom domains and subdomains
- Request inspection
- Built with Laravel
Chisel vs expose: key differences
Chisel is written in Go, while expose is built with PHP. Chisel is the lighter option, starting around 64 MB of RAM against 256 MB for expose. Chisel is the more established project (first released 2015), while expose arrived in 2020. Chisel has the considerably larger community, at 16,570 GitHub stars versus 4,574.
Why pick each one
Choose Chisel if…
- Single small binary
- SSH-encrypted tunnels
- Works over plain HTTP
Watch out for
- CLI configuration only
- Sparse documentation
Choose expose if…
- Released under the MIT license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (4.6k GitHub stars)
- Written in PHP
Frequently asked questions
Is Chisel or expose better?
Neither is universally better. Chisel has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Chisel and expose free and open-source?
Yes. Chisel is licensed under MIT and expose under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Chisel and expose with Docker?
Chisel: yes. expose: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Chisel or expose?
Chisel has the smaller minimum footprint at 64 MB of RAM, compared to about 256 MB for expose. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.