burrow

Persistent, named tunnel URLs for development teams - powered by Cloudflare.

burrow up
  [up] frontend  -> https://frontend.myapp.com
  [up] api       -> https://api.myapp.com

All tunnels running. Press Ctrl+C to stop.

Why burrow?

Most tunnel tools give you a random URL that changes every restart. This breaks webhooks, breaks shared links, and means your team is constantly asking "what's your ngrok URL?"

Burrow gives you named, persistent URLs defined in a .burrow.yaml file committed to your repo. Every teammate runs burrow up and gets the exact same domains every time.

No domain? Burrow works without a Cloudflare account too - tunnels without a domain fall back to free temporary trycloudflare.com URLs automatically.

vs ngrok: ngrok charges $8-20/month for persistent URLs. Burrow runs on Cloudflare Tunnel (no usage fees), so the only cost is your domain (~$10/year), shared across the whole team with no per-seat pricing.

vs raw cloudflared: Cloudflare Tunnel is the right infrastructure, but the raw CLI takes 7 manual steps to set up and produces credentials files that cannot be safely committed to git. Burrow automates DNS record creation, wraps the config into a single committable .burrow.yaml, and handles multi-tunnel process management. Each user still needs to authenticate once with burrow init, but everything after that is automated.

Requirements

For quick tunnels (burrow share, or burrow up without domains):

• Nothing. No account needed.

For persistent named URLs (burrow up with domains):

• A Cloudflare account (free)
• A domain managed by Cloudflare (~$10/year)

Installation

macOS and Linux

curl -sSL https://frank-chris.github.io/burrow/install.sh | sh

Also available via Homebrew: brew tap frank-chris/tap && brew install burrow

Windows (Scoop)

scoop bucket add frank-chris https://github.com/frank-chris/scoop-burrow
scoop install burrow

GitHub Releases

Download a prebuilt binary for any platform from the releases page.

Build from source

go install github.com/frank-chris/burrow@latest

Quick start

No account needed

Share a local port instantly:

burrow share 3000
# → https://random-words.trycloudflare.com

Or run multiple tunnels without any config:

# .burrow.yaml
tunnels:
  - name: frontend
    port: 3000
  - name: api
    port: 8080

burrow up
# → [up] frontend -> https://random1.trycloudflare.com
# → [up] api      -> https://random2.trycloudflare.com

cloudflared is downloaded automatically on first use.

Persistent named URLs (requires Cloudflare account)

Run burrow init once to store your credentials:

burrow init

Then add domains to your .burrow.yaml:

provider: cloudflare

tunnels:
  - name: frontend
    port: 3000
    domain: frontend.myapp.com
  - name: api
    port: 8080
    domain: api.myapp.com

burrow up
# → [up] frontend -> https://frontend.myapp.com
# → [up] api      -> https://api.myapp.com

Commit .burrow.yaml to your repo. Every teammate gets the same URLs every time.

Commands

Command	Description
burrow init	Set up Cloudflare credentials (only needed for persistent URLs)
burrow up	Start all tunnels defined in .burrow.yaml
burrow up <name>	Start a single named tunnel
burrow down	Stop all running tunnels
burrow down <name>	Stop a single named tunnel
burrow share <port>	Quick one-off public URL (no account needed)
burrow share <port> --password <pw>	Password-protected share
burrow share <port> --ttl 2h	Share that expires after 2 hours
burrow share <port> --qr	Print a QR code for the tunnel URL
burrow status	Show status of running tunnels
burrow logs	Show tunnel request logs
burrow logs <name>	Show logs for a specific tunnel
burrow logs -f	Follow logs in real time
burrow doctor	Diagnose setup issues
burrow uninstall	Remove all burrow data from your system

burrow down, burrow status, and burrow logs only apply to tunnels started with burrow up. burrow share runs in the foreground - use Ctrl+C to stop it. burrow logs requires a domain in .burrow.yaml; quick tunnels (no domain) do not write logs.

Configuration

.burrow.yaml supports multiple tunnels. domain is optional - omit it to use a free temporary trycloudflare.com URL:

provider: cloudflare  # only needed if any tunnel has a domain

tunnels:
  - name: frontend
    port: 3000
    domain: frontend.myapp.com  # persistent URL - requires burrow init

  - name: api
    port: 8080
    domain: api.myapp.com

  - name: docs
    port: 4000
    # no domain - gets a free temporary URL

WebSocket and HMR

Burrow inherits WebSocket support from cloudflared. Frameworks that use WebSockets for hot module replacement - Vite, Next.js, webpack-dev-server - work without any extra configuration.

Environment variables

Variable	Description
BURROW_CONFIG_DIR	Override the default config directory (~/.burrow)

Cloudflare setup

Only needed for persistent named URLs. For a step-by-step walkthrough see the Cloudflare setup guide.

Summary:

1. Create a Cloudflare account and add your domain
2. Find your Account ID at dash.cloudflare.com - click the ⋮ icon next to the + Add button and select "Copy account ID"
3. Create a Custom Token at dash.cloudflare.com/profile/api-tokens with these permissions:
   • Account / Cloudflare Tunnel / Edit
   • Zone / DNS / Edit
   • Zone / Zone / Read
4. Run burrow init and enter your token and Account ID

License

MIT