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.
| Feature | GOST | rathole |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 91 · 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 | ★ 7,527 | ★ 14,252 |
| First released | 2017 | 2021 |
| Replaces | Chisel, ngrok | ngrok, frp |
What are GOST and rathole?
GOST
GOST is an open-source command-line tool that provides flexible secure tunneling and proxying with support for many protocols. It is self-hosted to build relay chains and forward traffic.
- Multi-protocol tunneling
- Relay chaining
- Port forwarding
- Single binary
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
GOST vs rathole: key differences
GOST is written in Go, while rathole is built with Rust. Licensing differs — MIT for GOST versus Apache-2.0 for rathole. GOST is the more established project (first released 2017), while rathole arrived in 2021.
Why pick each one
Choose GOST if…
- Released under the MIT license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Mature project with 7.5k GitHub stars
- Written in Go
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 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.