SHSelfHostIndex

GOST 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?
GO GOST Versatile secure tunneling and proxy toolkit VS RA rathole Lightweight and high-performance reverse proxy for NAT traversal
FeatureGOSTrathole
CategoryRemote Access & VPNRemote Access & VPN
LicenseMITApache-2.0
LanguageGoRust
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM64 MB64 MB
Deploymentbinary, dockerbinary, docker
GitHub stars★ 7,255★ 13,999
First released20172021
ReplacesChisel, ngrokngrok, frp

Why pick each one

Choose GOST if…

  • Released under the MIT license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Mature project with 7.3k GitHub stars
  • Written in Go
GOST details

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
rathole details

Frequently asked questions

Is GOST or rathole better?

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

Are GOST and rathole free and open-source?

Yes. GOST is licensed under MIT and rathole under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run GOST and rathole with Docker?

GOST: yes. rathole: yes.

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