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.
| Feature | Chisel | rathole |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 95 · Excellent | 75 · Good |
| 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 | ★ 16,571 | ★ 14,252 |
| First released | 2015 | 2021 |
| Replaces | ngrok | ngrok, frp |
What are Chisel and rathole?
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
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
Chisel vs rathole: key differences
Chisel is written in Go, while rathole is built with Rust. Licensing differs — MIT for Chisel versus Apache-2.0 for rathole. Chisel is the more established project (first released 2015), while rathole arrived in 2021.
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 rathole if…
- Tiny binary and memory use
- Simple TOML config
- Encrypted transport
Watch out for
- Fewer features than frp
- No web dashboard
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.