ngrok
All your traffic. One gateway.
About ngrok
ngrok is an all-in-one cloud networking platform that secures, transforms, and routes traffic to services running anywhere. It enables developers to expose local applications to the internet via secure tunnels and serves as a unified API gateway, AI gateway, and device gateway for production workloads, used by over 5 million developers.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Expose local development servers to the internet in seconds with a single command
- Excellent documentation and wide ecosystem of integration guides
- Debug webhooks locally without deploying with built-in traffic inspection
- Cross-platform support on Windows, macOS, and Linux
- Built-in TLS, mutual TLS, OAuth, and IP restrictions for security
- Production-grade gateway with API gateway, load balancing, and DDoS protection
Cons
- Free tier has interstitial warning page, session limits, and random URLs
- Hobbyist plan includes only 5GB bandwidth which runs out quickly
- No UDP tunnel support limiting real-time application testing
- SSO and custom domains require the \u002420+/month tier
- Some users report slow support responses on lower tiers
Key Features
Secure Tunnels
Connect services anywhere to the internet without firewall changes or port forwarding
API Gateway
Deliver, secure, and manage APIs with built-in authentication and rate limiting
AI Gateway
Route, secure, and transform traffic to AI models with policy-based controls
Traffic Policy Engine
Route and transform traffic using CEL-based rules for fine-grained control
Traffic Inspector
Real-time traffic inspection and debugging for HTTP requests and responses
Load Balancing
Scale services with automatic endpoint replication across infrastructure
DDoS Protection
Block volumetric attacks automatically at the network edge
Kubernetes Operator
Native integration with Kubernetes manifests for cloud-native deployments
Log Export
Send traffic logs to Datadog, CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, and other observability platforms
Pricing
- $5 one-time usage credit
- Up to 3 endpoints
- 1GB bandwidth
- 20K HTTP/S requests
- 1 team member
- $10 monthly usage credit
- Up to 3 endpoints
- 5GB bandwidth
- 100K HTTP/S requests
- Custom ngrok domains
- $20 monthly usage credit
- Unlimited endpoints
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Bring your own domain
- SSO/RBAC add-ons
Best For
Local Development & Demos
Expose locally running web applications to collaborators and clients for demos without deploying
Webhook Development
Receive webhook callbacks from Stripe, GitHub, Twilio directly on your local machine for real-time debugging
API Gateway for Microservices
Unified ingress point for APIs with built-in authentication, rate limiting, and traffic policies
IoT & Device Management
Connect and manage remote IoT devices through secure tunnels without complex VPN configurations
AI Model Traffic Routing
Route and observe traffic to AI/LLM endpoints with policies for cost control and safety filtering
Similar Tools
Visual Studio Code
Free, open-source code editor from Microsoft
Replicate
Run AI with an API
Vultr
High-performance cloud compute, GPU, and bare metal across 32 global data centers
Qodo
AI-powered code integrity platform for automated testing and code review
Blackbox AI
AI coding assistant with 300+ models and autonomous agents
Pythagora
AI development platform that builds production-ready full-stack apps with multi-agent collaboration