// best by category
The cheapest ngrok alternative that actually works
Cheap tunnel services come in three shapes: hosted with a flat fee (lrok at $9/mo), bundled with a service you already pay for (Cloudflare Tunnel $0 if Cloudflare-DNS), or self-hosted (bore + your VPS bill). We rank them on real total cost of ownership for a small dev team.
lrok
$9/mo flat. Unlimited tunnels, unlimited bandwidth, custom domains, TCP, request inspector. No metering, no SSO tax, no enterprise upsell. The price doesn't change as you grow until you'd want SOC 2.
wins at
Predictable monthly cost, no per-feature gating, hosted (no infra to maintain), single command setup.
loses at
Not free at the Pro tier (Cloudflare Tunnel is). If you happen to already manage a Cloudflare domain, that's $0.
Cloudflare Tunnel
Free if you have a domain on Cloudflare. The math: a domain on Cloudflare DNS is $8-12/year, then unlimited tunnels at $0. Best per-dollar deal if you're already a Cloudflare customer.
wins at
Effectively $0/mo on top of a Cloudflare-DNS domain you might already own.
loses at
Setup overhead (cloudflared install + DNS), no built-in request inspector, dev-loop ergonomics not a focus.
bore (self-host)
Open-source Rust reverse-tunnel. $0 software cost; you run your own server. Real TCO is your VPS bill ($5-10/mo at Hetzner) plus the time to maintain it.
wins at
Truly free at the software layer, you control the entire path, MIT-licensed.
loses at
You operate the server. Cert renewal, abuse mitigation, monitoring all on you. For a small team that doesn't already run infra, the operational cost > the $9/mo lrok charges.
// verdict
On real TCO: Cloudflare Tunnel wins if you already use Cloudflare DNS. lrok wins if you don't (and don't want to migrate). bore wins if you genuinely want to self-host and have an engineer-hour to spare on ops.