Sunshine 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?
Sunshine
Self-hosted game-stream host for Moonlight clients
VS
rathole
Lightweight and high-performance reverse proxy for NAT traversal
| Feature | Sunshine | rathole |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Remote Access & VPN | Remote Access & VPN |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | C++ | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | binary, docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 39,962 | ★ 13,999 |
| First released | 2020 | 2021 |
| Replaces | NVIDIA GameStream, Parsec | ngrok, frp |
Why pick each one
Choose Sunshine if…
- Released under the GPL-3.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Mature project with 40k GitHub stars
- Written in C++
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
Frequently asked questions
Is Sunshine or rathole better?
Neither is universally better. Sunshine has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Sunshine and rathole free and open-source?
Yes. Sunshine is licensed under GPL-3.0 and rathole under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Sunshine and rathole with Docker?
Sunshine: yes. rathole: yes.