gTunnel 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 | gTunnel | rathole |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 8 · At risk | 75 · Good |
| Category | Remote Access & VPN | Remote Access & VPN |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | binary, docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 274 | ★ 14,252 |
| First released | 2020 | 2021 |
| Replaces | ngrok | ngrok, frp |
What are gTunnel and rathole?
gTunnel
gTunnel is a self-hosted TCP tunneling tool built on gRPC that can forward and reverse-forward ports between a server and connected clients through firewalls. It is run as a server and client pair.
- gRPC-based tunneling
- Forward and reverse ports
- Firewall traversal
- Server-client model
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
gTunnel vs rathole: key differences
GTunnel is written in Go, while rathole is built with Rust. Licensing differs — GPL-3.0 for gTunnel versus Apache-2.0 for rathole. Rathole has the considerably larger community, at 14,252 GitHub stars versus 274.
Why pick each one
Choose gTunnel if…
- Released under the GPL-3.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Written in Go
- Tiny footprint — runs in 64 MB RAM
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 gTunnel 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 gTunnel and rathole free and open-source?
Yes. gTunnel is licensed under GPL-3.0 and rathole under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run gTunnel and rathole with Docker?
gTunnel: yes. rathole: yes.