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I’ve been looking for an ngrok alternative for a while now that’s (a) affordable (b) easy to use and (c) works with Kitten¹. Today, after testing a bunch of them again and getting fed up, I found LocalXpose that checks all the boxes.

I signed Small Technology Foundation up as an affiliate so if you use this link to check it out, we’ll get 40% of your $6/mo pro account fee should you subscribe:

https://localxpose.io/?via=kitten

¹ https://codeberg.org/kitten/app

#ngrok #LocalXpose #Kitten #SmallWeb #web #dev


app

A web development kit that’s small, purrs, and loves you.
Codeberg.org
#dev #web #SmallWeb #kitten #ngrok #localxpose

Aral Balkan reshared this.

in reply to Aral Balkan

Azuaron
Azuaron
• •
Were you looking for additional options, or is there a downside to ngrok?
in reply to Azuaron

Aral Balkan
Aral Balkan
• •

The pricing, really. At one point I was paying ngrok ~$99/year for a pro account but that’s now gone up to $240/yr if you pay annually or $300/yr if you pay monthly so that’s way outside our budget as a tiny not-for-profit that doesn’t make any money to speak of.

LocalXpose costs $6/mo and allows multiple ports (80, 443) and pass-through TLS (which Kitten needs) and supports WebSockets (which a few of the other alternatives failed with).

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
in reply to Aral Balkan

Aral Balkan
Aral Balkan
• •

…Before this, I had set up a tiny VPS server that I installed WireGuard on that I was using to expose my dev server. It was a geeky exercise in setting up WireGuard, NAT/port-forwarding, etc. and it worked but with notable downsides:

• I could only use it from one computer at a time

• It meant my machine was removed from the local network so I couldn’t, for example, also control my Atem Mini Pro for streaming/recording.

LocalXpose doesn’t suffer from either issue.

in reply to Aral Balkan

Aral Balkan
Aral Balkan
• •

PS. I’ve now added this to the Kitten readme but if you are using LocalXpose to expose your Kitten server to the world, start it up like this, replacing <your domain> with, well, your domain:

loclx tunnel http --reserved-domain <your domain> --https-to localhost:443 --to localhost:80 --region eu

And then start Kitten up from your project folder with:

kitten --domain=<your domain>

(And remember this is just for exposing your dev server. You can also deploy to a public VPS, etc., with Kitten.)

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
in reply to Aral Balkan

Paul McBride
Paul McBride
• •
check out Tailscale. They basically provide a managed WireGuard setup and they have a decent free plan.
in reply to Paul McBride

Aral Balkan
Aral Balkan
• •
@ThePaulMcBride Thanks for the pointer but, again, I don’t want to change my computer’s network so a VPN-based solution doesn’t help. (Otherwise I have my own VPS server setup with WireGuard where I can do – and was doing – the same thing.) :)
@Paul McBride
in reply to Aral Balkan

Paul McBride
Paul McBride
• •
not 100% sure what you mean by change your computers network, but it can be ran in a docker container too, so can be fairly isolated.
in reply to Paul McBride

Aral Balkan
Aral Balkan
• •
I mean when I connected to the WireGuard server, I lost the ability to reach my local network (e.g., to find and control the Atem Mini Pro on my local network). Granted, this might very well have been a misconfiguration on my part but part of it is I really need something that works without my having to mess with NAT/port forwarding, etc.
This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
in reply to Aral Balkan

jon ⚝
jon ⚝
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As a side note, Headscale + @tailscale work really well for an internal network under all circumstances, with emphasis on all.
@Tailscale
in reply to Aral Balkan

4censord
4censord
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> It meant my machine was removed from the local network

That sounds weird, i can still access my local network while my WireGuard is active. Maybe some routing priority setting was wrong?

(just checked again, am connected to a WireGuard, and can still access my home server just fine)

in reply to 4censord

Aral Balkan
Aral Balkan
• •
@4censord Hmm, odd. Maybe it was a configuration issue on my end. But that’s part of it, I really don’t want to worry about all that. Especially, say, on my laptop when I’m at some conference venue and giving a talk where I want folks in the audience to be able to connect to my machine so we can all play with whatever it is I’m building/demonstrating :)
@4censord
in reply to Aral Balkan

gary
gary
• •
you can set up wg on multiple pc - having wg inf does not affect local connectivity - wg is leader of open source vpn tech - why are you trying to sell everything - be geeky and sell only really exceptional stuff
in reply to gary

Aral Balkan
Aral Balkan
• •
@gary_alderson I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m talking about the experience I had and what works for me. And if you’re criticising an affiliate link for a $6/mo subscription, 40% of which would benefit our not-for-profit that’s been struggling to exist for the last however many years because everything we do is free and open source and we haven’t got any funding well… I mean… I guess we should just die, eh?
@gary
in reply to Aral Balkan

Gabe Kangas
Gabe Kangas
• •
Just want to throw this in, as it’s something I use myself: http://serveo.net/ since it’s free, convenient, and uses existing tooling. But it’s less turnkey.

Serveo: expose local servers to the internet using SSH

serveo.net
in reply to Gabe Kangas

Aral Balkan
Aral Balkan
• •

@gabek That was one of the ones I tried out. Sadly, didn’t work for Kitten, which needs TLS passthrough and both port 80 and 443.

Otherwise, yeah, looks good :)

@Gabe Kangas
in reply to Aral Balkan

Timo Tiuraniemi
Timo Tiuraniemi
• •
Hmm, doesn't seem to be open source? Their github at least looks outdated and can't find a link anywhere else either on their site.
This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
in reply to Timo Tiuraniemi

Aral Balkan
Aral Balkan
• •
@ttiurani I don’t think it is open source, no. But neither is ngrok (hasn’t been for a while).
@Timo Tiuraniemi
in reply to Aral Balkan

Astrobob
Astrobob
• •
is this different from cloudflare tunnels. I've been looking for a similar solution and cf tunnels seems to be wildly recommended but they don't have exact limits on what you can use them for which is annoying.
in reply to Astrobob

Aral Balkan
Aral Balkan
• •
@astrobob Apart from my knee-jerk aversion to CloudFlare, I really don’t know. It’s not one I’ve tried. Do let us know how it goes if you do :)
@Astrobob
in reply to Aral Balkan

Olivier Forget
Olivier Forget
• •
Good to know about LocalXpose! Did any others come close to being suitable? I also need to find a solution to this, and ngrok pricing is just not workable. Thanks.
in reply to Olivier Forget

Aral Balkan
Aral Balkan
• •

@teleclimber Not for my needs with Kitten. I was basically going through the Awesome Tunneling (https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling) list and getting more and more discouraged until I found it.

@gabek just mentioned that http://serveo.net/ works him.

Good luck with your search :)


GitHub - anderspitman/awesome-tunneling: List of ngrok/Cloudflare Tunnel alternatives and other tunneling software and services. Focus on self-hosting.

List of ngrok/Cloudflare Tunnel alternatives and other tunneling software and services. Focus on self-hosting. - anderspitman/awesome-tunneling
GitHub
@Olivier Forget @Gabe Kangas
in reply to Aral Balkan

Shubham Arora
Shubham Arora
• •
so basically tailsacle + cloudflare tunnel with nice gui.
in reply to Shubham Arora

Aral Balkan
Aral Balkan
• •
@arshubham Haven’t used neither, I can’t say, but it lets me expose my dev machine publicly without worrying about anything (and I’ve got enough to worry about building what I’m building) :)
@Shubham Arora
in reply to Aral Balkan

Pierre Carrier
Pierre Carrier
• •
Curious to hear your thoughts on https://srv.us if you tried it?

ssh srv.us

expose local services over TLS online (and a pastebin)
ssh srv.us
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