GOST vs wstunnel
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 | wstunnel |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 91 · Excellent | 91 · Excellent |
| Category | Remote Access & VPN | Remote Access & VPN |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Language | Go | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | binary, docker | binary, docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 7,527 | ★ 7,054 |
| First released | 2017 | 2015 |
| Replaces | Chisel, ngrok | Chisel |
What are GOST and wstunnel?
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
wstunnel
wstunnel is an open-source tool that tunnels TCP and UDP traffic over WebSocket or HTTP2 to bypass restrictive firewalls and proxies. It is self-hosted to reach services behind network barriers.
- Tunnel over WebSocket
- TCP and UDP support
- Firewall bypass
- Single binary
GOST vs wstunnel: key differences
GOST is written in Go, while wstunnel is built with Rust. Licensing differs — MIT for GOST versus BSD-3-Clause for wstunnel. Wstunnel is the more established project (first released 2015), while GOST arrived in 2017.
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 wstunnel if…
- Released under the BSD-3-Clause license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Mature project with 7.1k GitHub stars
- Written in Rust
Frequently asked questions
Is GOST or wstunnel better?
Neither is universally better. GOST has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are GOST and wstunnel free and open-source?
Yes. GOST is licensed under MIT and wstunnel under BSD-3-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run GOST and wstunnel with Docker?
GOST: yes. wstunnel: yes.