Chisel 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?
Chisel
Fast TCP/UDP tunnel over HTTP secured by SSH
VS
rathole
Lightweight and high-performance reverse proxy for NAT traversal
| Feature | Chisel | rathole |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Remote Access & VPN | Remote Access & VPN |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | binary, docker | binary, docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 16,362 | ★ 13,999 |
| First released | 2015 | 2021 |
| Replaces | ngrok | ngrok, frp |
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
Choose rathole if…
- Released under the Apache-2.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Mature project with 14k GitHub stars
- Written in Rust
Frequently asked questions
Is Chisel or rathole 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 rathole free and open-source?
Yes. Chisel is licensed under MIT and rathole under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Chisel and rathole with Docker?
Chisel: yes. rathole: yes.