tunnelmole 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 | tunnelmole | rathole |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 66 · Good | 75 · Good |
| Category | Remote Access & VPN | Remote Access & VPN |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | TypeScript | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | binary, docker, source | binary, docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 1,892 | ★ 14,252 |
| First released | 2021 | 2021 |
| Replaces | ngrok, localtunnel | ngrok, frp |
What are tunnelmole and rathole?
tunnelmole
Tunnelmole is an open-source tunneling tool that gives local web servers a public URL. The client and server are both open source so the entire service can be self-hosted.
- Public URLs for local apps
- Self-hostable server
- No signup needed
- Cross-platform client
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
tunnelmole vs rathole: key differences
Tunnelmole is written in TypeScript, while rathole is built with Rust. Licensing differs — MIT for tunnelmole versus Apache-2.0 for rathole. Rathole is the lighter option, starting around 64 MB of RAM against 128 MB for tunnelmole. Rathole has the considerably larger community, at 14,252 GitHub stars versus 1,892.
Why pick each one
Choose tunnelmole if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (1.9k GitHub stars)
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 tunnelmole or rathole better?
Neither is universally better. rathole has the larger community, while tunnelmole is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are tunnelmole and rathole free and open-source?
Yes. tunnelmole is licensed under MIT and rathole under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run tunnelmole and rathole with Docker?
tunnelmole: yes. rathole: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, tunnelmole or rathole?
rathole has the smaller minimum footprint at 64 MB of RAM, compared to about 128 MB for tunnelmole. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.