frp 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 | frp | rathole |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 100 · Excellent | 75 · Good |
| Category | Remote Access & VPN | Remote Access & VPN |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | binary, docker | binary, docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 109,598 | ★ 14,252 |
| First released | 2016 | 2021 |
| Replaces | ngrok | ngrok, frp |
What are frp and rathole?
frp
frp is a fast reverse proxy that exposes a local server located behind a NAT or firewall to the internet. It supports TCP, UDP, HTTP, and HTTPS tunneling.
- Expose services behind NAT
- TCP, UDP, and HTTP tunnels
- Single binary
- Encryption and compression
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
frp vs rathole: key differences
Frp is written in Go, while rathole is built with Rust. Frp is the more established project (first released 2016), while rathole arrived in 2021. Frp has the considerably larger community, at 109,598 GitHub stars versus 14,252.
Why pick each one
Choose frp if…
- Single lightweight binary
- TCP UDP HTTP tunneling
- Battle-tested and popular
Watch out for
- Needs a public server
- Manual config file editing
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 frp or rathole better?
Neither is universally better. frp has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are frp and rathole free and open-source?
Yes. frp is licensed under Apache-2.0 and rathole under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run frp and rathole with Docker?
frp: yes. rathole: yes.