Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

ngrok VS Nginx Proxy Manager

Compare ngrok VS Nginx Proxy Manager and see what are their differences

ngrok logo ngrok

ngrok enables secure introspectable tunnels to localhost webhook development tool and debugging tool.

Nginx Proxy Manager logo Nginx Proxy Manager

Docker container and built in Web Application for managing Nginx proxy hosts with a simple, powerful interface, providing free SSL support via Let's Encrypt
  • ngrok Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-22
  • Nginx Proxy Manager Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-06-17

ngrok features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    ngrok simplifies the process of creating secure public URLs to your local web server. It eliminates complex network configurations and is user-friendly even for beginners.
  • Security
    ngrok tunnels are secured with HTTPS, offering a robust way to expose services without compromising security. It supports multiple authentication methods, ensuring a secure connection.
  • Speed of Setup
    Setting up ngrok is quick. You just need to download the executable and run a simple command to get started. This makes it ideal for rapid development and testing.
  • Flexibility
    ngrok supports multiple protocols including HTTP, HTTPS, and TCP, making it versatile for various types of services.
  • Monitoring
    ngrok provides a web interface for monitoring HTTP traffic flowing through the tunnels, which helps in debugging and analytics.
  • Built-in Authentication
    It includes built-in authentication options, enabling you to create protected tunnels easily without needing to configure your web server.

Possible disadvantages of ngrok

  • Pricing
    While ngrok offers a free tier, many advanced features such as custom subdomains, reserved domains, and additional security features require a paid subscription.
  • Latency
    Because your data is routed through an external server, there can be a noticeable increase in latency, which might affect performance especially for real-time applications.
  • Temporary URLs
    The URLs provided in the free tier are temporary and change every time you restart ngrok. This can be inconvenient for long-term use or sharing links.
  • Rate Limits
    The free version has rate limits on the amount of traffic that can be tunneled, which could be restrictive for high-traffic applications.
  • Dependency
    Using ngrok creates a dependency on an external service, which means your tunnels are subject to ngrok’s availability and reliability. Any downtime on ngrok's end can affect your service.
  • Limited Customization
    The free tier offers limited customization options. More advanced customization requires subscription to a paid plan.

Nginx Proxy Manager features and specs

  • User-Friendly Interface
    Nginx Proxy Manager comes with an intuitive, easy-to-use graphical interface that simplifies the setup and management of proxies.
  • Free and Open Source
    It is free to use and is open-source software, allowing for community contributions and customizable features.
  • SSL Certificate Management
    The platform allows for straightforward management of SSL certificates, including automatic renewal with Let's Encrypt.
  • Docker Integration
    Nginx Proxy Manager is available as a Docker container, making it easy to integrate into various environments and simplifying deployment.
  • Multi-Host Support
    Easily configure multiple hosts and services through the management interface, which is useful for managing a large number of services.
  • Access Control
    It provides customizable access lists and HTTP Basic Authentication to secure your services.

Possible disadvantages of Nginx Proxy Manager

  • Limited Advanced Features
    While suitable for most basic proxy needs, Nginx Proxy Manager lacks some advanced features and customizability that power users might require.
  • Performance Overhead
    Running the platform through Docker can introduce a minor performance overhead compared to a native Nginx setup.
  • Community Support
    Community-driven support might not be as robust or timely as professional, enterprise-level support services.
  • Dependency on Docker
    Requires Docker to run, which may not be ideal for all environments or fit into existing infrastructure without adjustments.
  • Resource Consumption
    Running the web interface alongside Nginx can incrementally increase resource consumption, especially in resource-constrained environments.

ngrok videos

EQUIP | The making of ngrok - Alan Shreve (ngrok)

More videos:

  • Tutorial - How to use LPB Software + Easy Ngrok Setup
  • Tutorial - ngrok tutorial -Access your localhost Wordpress theme from anywhere of the world without hosting
  • Review - spynote x loclx

Nginx Proxy Manager videos

Nginx Proxy Manager Overview/Review

More videos:

  • Review - Nginx Proxy Manager - How-To Installation and Configuration
  • Review - NginX Proxy Manager is a free, open source, GUI for the NginX Reverse Proxy making it easy to use.

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to ngrok and Nginx Proxy Manager)
Testing
100 100%
0% 0
Load Balancers
0 0%
100% 100
Localhost Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Web Servers
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare ngrok and Nginx Proxy Manager

ngrok Reviews

Localtonet | Best Ngrok Alternatives
Exposing local web services to the internet is essential for web developers, but it can be a bit challenging. Ngrok has been the most popular tool for this job, but it's not the only option out there. In this article, we'll explore some of the best ngrok alternatives
Source: localtonet.com
Best ngrok alternatives for localhost tunnels
ngrok provides tunnels for ingress through its programmable network edge. Additionally, it offers observability as well as the ability to change traffic parameters such as headers on the go to your apps with no code changes. In order to use ngrok you must download the ngrok client and sign up to get an account.
Source: pinggy.io
7 Ngrok Alternatives & Competitors for App Tunneling, Free & Paid
For example, let’s say you have a web project on your machine written in Python using the Django framework. Your local server will probably run on an URL like http://localhost:8000 ― which is only accessible on your local machine. With a service like Ngrok, you can configure a public URL like https://myapp.ngrok.io in a single command line and have all the traffic from this...
Source: onboardbase.com
Tools for Testing Webhooks
As it supports cross-platforms, download the suitable binary for OS. For Windows, there is only one binary, ngrok.exe. Copy this to the C:\ngrok folder (or wherever preferred) and enter the command below: [code lang=text] ngrok http 7071 -host-header=localhost [/code]
Top 4 BEST Ngrok Alternatives In 2021: Review And Comparison
NgrokUser is required to sign up in order to generate auth token.Supports all 3 protocols.Usage is through ngrok executable (or through node js based library).Offers both free and paid version. Free version has limited but rich functionalities.Subdomains are supported in the paid version.

Nginx Proxy Manager Reviews

We have no reviews of Nginx Proxy Manager yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

ngrok might be a bit more popular than Nginx Proxy Manager. We know about 399 links to it since March 2021 and only 293 links to Nginx Proxy Manager. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

ngrok mentions (399)

  • How to Chat with Gemini 2.5 Pro from VSCode via AI Studio (Free and Unlimited)
    Create a tunnel to my local server using a tool like ngrok. - Source: dev.to / 18 days ago
  • I made slack agent without langchain
    If you are testing locally, you can use a service like ngrok to expose your local server to the internet. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • SSR Deep Dive for React Developers
    Now, expose the website to the outside world with ngrok (or a similar tool if you have it):. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Fast and secure ingress to remote AIs with ngrok, Deepseek, and Ollama
    Ngrok: You’ll lean on ngrok’s universal ingress platform for securing and persisting ingress to Ollama and the GPU power behind your LLM. Ngrok abstracts away the networking and configuration complexities around securely connecting to remote services, while also layering in authentication, authorization, and observability you’ll need for a viable long-term solution. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • DeepSeek-R1 on Cursor with Ollama
    By default, ollama serve endpoint http://127.0.0.1:11434 but if u direct using the endpoint to cursor I cant be used. So we need ngrok. U can download and login it, then they instruct u to login via auth token. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
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Nginx Proxy Manager mentions (293)

  • Adventures in Homelabbing: From Cloud Obsession to Self-Hosted Shenanigans
    I began to self-host a Minecraft server using Crafty Controller, an Excalidraw instance, Docmost to replace Notion, Plane to replace Jira, and Penpot to replace Figma. To be able to access them from the internet, I used Nginx Proxy Manager to set up reverse proxies with SSL. You can use Traefik or Caddy instead, but I enjoyed the ease-of-use of NPM. For a dashboard solution, I started with Homarr, but later... - Source: dev.to / 23 days ago
  • Pihole v6
    Pi-hole is a killer application and I've loved it since I got it setup. One other app I highly recommend to run on your Pi in addition to Pi-hole is Nginx Proxy Manager[1]. [1]: https://nginxproxymanager.com/. - Source: Hacker News / 2 months ago
  • A story on home server security
    If anyone is looking for one, https://nginxproxymanager.com/ Been using it for years and it’s been solid. - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • Blackcandy: Self hosted music streaming server
    Most people will use nginx-proxy [0] or Traefik [1] for front ending home labs with LetsEncrypt certs... Beyond that people will protect them with things like Tailscale [2], Cloudflare Tunnels [3] or even just mTLS [4] for protected access. Home labbing today has a lot of amazing software and it's hard to keep up! And as for dashboarding [5] on top of all this there are a lot of options. [0]... - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • Can I put multiple services on one web domain using subdomains?
    Take a look at NginxProxyManager. This would give you the opportunity to put everything in the form of service1.domain.com , service2.domain.com ,etc. Source: over 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing ngrok and Nginx Proxy Manager, you can also consider the following products

Pagekite - Bring your localhost servers on-line.

Traefik - Load Balancer / Reverse Proxy

localhost.run - Instantly share your localhost environment!

Caddy - The HTTP/2 Web Server with Automatic HTTPS

Portmap.io - Expose your local PC to Internet from behind firewall and without real IP address

nginx - A high performance free open source web server powering busiest sites on the Internet.