SHSelfHostIndex

Chisel vs gTunnel

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?
CH Chisel Fast TCP/UDP tunnel over HTTP secured by SSH VS GT gTunnel Robust TCP tunneling solution over gRPC
FeatureChiselgTunnel
Deploy effortUnder-an-hour setupUnder-an-hour setup
Health score95 · Excellent8 · At risk
CategoryRemote Access & VPNRemote Access & VPN
LicenseMITGPL-3.0
LanguageGoGo
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM64 MB64 MB
Deploymentbinary, dockerdocker, binary
GitHub stars★ 16,571★ 274
First released20152020
Replacesngrokngrok

What are Chisel and gTunnel?

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

Read the full Chisel guide →

gTunnel

gTunnel is a self-hosted TCP tunneling tool built on gRPC that can forward and reverse-forward ports between a server and connected clients through firewalls. It is run as a server and client pair.

  • gRPC-based tunneling
  • Forward and reverse ports
  • Firewall traversal
  • Server-client model

Chisel vs gTunnel: key differences

Both projects are written in Go. Licensing differs — MIT for Chisel versus GPL-3.0 for gTunnel. Chisel is the more established project (first released 2015), while gTunnel arrived in 2020. Chisel has the considerably larger community, at 16,571 GitHub stars versus 274.

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
Chisel details

Choose gTunnel if…

  • Released under the GPL-3.0 license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Written in Go
  • Tiny footprint — runs in 64 MB RAM
gTunnel details

Frequently asked questions

Is Chisel or gTunnel 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 gTunnel free and open-source?

Yes. Chisel is licensed under MIT and gTunnel under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Chisel and gTunnel with Docker?

Chisel: yes. gTunnel: yes.

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