pgrok 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 | pgrok | rathole |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 79 · Good | 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 | docker, binary | binary, docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 3,649 | ★ 14,252 |
| First released | 2023 | 2021 |
| Replaces | ngrok | ngrok, frp |
What are pgrok and rathole?
pgrok
pgrok is an open-source, self-hosted alternative to ngrok for exposing local web servers to the internet via secure tunnels. It uses SSH for transport and is simple to deploy.
- SSH-based tunneling
- Self-hosted server
- Custom subdomains
- Lightweight Go 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
pgrok vs rathole: key differences
Pgrok is written in Go, while rathole is built with Rust. Licensing differs — MIT for pgrok versus Apache-2.0 for rathole. Rathole is the more established project (first released 2021), while pgrok arrived in 2023. Rathole has the considerably larger community, at 14,252 GitHub stars versus 3,649.
Why pick each one
Choose pgrok if…
- Released under the MIT license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (3.6k 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 pgrok 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 pgrok and rathole free and open-source?
Yes. pgrok is licensed under MIT and rathole under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run pgrok and rathole with Docker?
pgrok: yes. rathole: yes.