SHSelfHostIndex

Chisel vs Sunshine

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 SU Sunshine Self-hosted game-stream host for Moonlight clients
FeatureChiselSunshine
CategoryRemote Access & VPNRemote Access & VPN
LicenseMITGPL-3.0
LanguageGoC++
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM64 MB512 MB
Deploymentbinary, dockerdocker, binary
GitHub stars★ 16,362★ 39,962
First released20152020
ReplacesngrokNVIDIA GameStream, Parsec

Why pick each one

Choose Chisel if…

  • Released under the MIT license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Mature project with 16.4k GitHub stars
  • Written in Go
Chisel details

Choose Sunshine if…

  • Released under the GPL-3.0 license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Mature project with 40k GitHub stars
  • Written in C++
Sunshine details

Frequently asked questions

Is Chisel or Sunshine better?

Neither is universally better. Sunshine has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are Chisel and Sunshine free and open-source?

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

Can I run Chisel and Sunshine with Docker?

Chisel: yes. Sunshine: yes.

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