🚀 Tunly

Tunly is a modern, lightweight, and easy-to-self-host ngrok alternative written in Rust. It allows you to expose your local development servers to the internet securely via WebSocket-based tunneling.

✨ Features

• Extreme Simplicity: Just one command to expose your local port.
• WebSocket-based: High-performance HTTP tunneling (inspired by Chisel).
• Auto-HTTPS: Built-in Caddy sidecar for automatic Let's Encrypt SSL.
• Auto-Reconnect: Robust client with exponential backoff.
• Custom Subdomains: Random assignment or --name for reserved subdomains.

🚀 Quickstart

1. Server (Self-Host on your VPS)

Ensure you have Docker and Docker Compose installed. Point your domain (e.g., *.tunly.sh and tunly.sh) to your server's IP.

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/spidervirus/tunly.git
cd tunly

# Set your domain and token
export TUNLY_DOMAIN=yourdomain.com
export TUNLY_TOKEN=mysecrettoken

# Start the server
docker compose up -d

2. Client (CLI)

# Compile the client
cargo build --release -p tunly-client

# Register a single tunnel (random name)
./target/release/tunly-client http 3000 --server wss://yourdomain.com/tunnel --token mysecrettoken

# Register with a custom name
./target/release/tunly-client http 3000 --server wss://yourdomain.com/tunnel --token mysecrettoken --name myapp

# Register multiple tunnels in one process
./target/release/tunly-client http 3000:api 4000:admin --server wss://yourdomain.com/tunnel --token mysecrettoken

Now access your site at: https://myapp.yourdomain.com

🛠 Local Dev Mode

To test Tunly locally without a real domain:

1. Edit /etc/hosts: Add the following lines to map your local fake domain and a subdomain:

   127.0.0.1  tunly.local
   127.0.0.1  myapp.tunly.local

2. Start Server:

   export TUNLY_DOMAIN=tunly.local
   docker compose up -d

3. Run Client: Use the --insecure flag to accept the self-signed certificate from Caddy:

   ./target/release/tunly-client 3000 \
     --server wss://tunly.local/tunnel \
     --token secret \
     --name myapp \
     --insecure

4. Visit: https://myapp.tunly.local (accept the browser security warning).

📊 Comparison

Feature	Tunly	ngrok	frp	chisel	rathole	bore	zgrok
Language	Rust 🦀	Go	Go	Go	Rust 🦀	Rust 🦀	Rust 🦀
Simplicity	🟢 Extreme	🟢 High	🔴 Low	🟡 Medium	🔴 Low	🟢 High	🟡 Medium
Self-Host	🟢 1-Click	🔴 SaaS	🟡 Complex	🟢 Simple	🟡 Complex	🟢 Simple	🟢 Simple
Auto-HTTPS	🟢 Yes	🟢 Yes	🔴 No	🔴 No	🔴 No	🔴 No	🟢 Yes
Multi-Tunnel	🟢 Yes	🟡 Paid	🟢 Yes	🟢 Yes	🟢 Yes	🔴 No	🟢 Yes
Streaming	🟢 Chunked	🟢 Yes	🟡 Mixed	🟡 Mixed	🟡 Mixed	🔴 No	🟢 Yes
Auth	🟢 Token	🟢 Complex	🟡 Basic	🟢 SSH	🟡 Basic	🔴 None	🟢 Complex

🛠 Self-Hosting Guide

Exposing your local machine to the internet shouldn't be hard. Tunly is designed to be the easiest self-hosted option.

Prerequisites

• A VPS (DigitalOcean, Hetzner, AWS, etc.)
• A domain name (e.g., tunly.sh)
• Docker & Docker Compose

1. DNS Configuration

Set up two A records pointing to your VPS IP:

• yourdomain.com -> IP
• *.yourdomain.com -> IP (Wildcard is required for dynamic subdomains)

2. Server Deployment

# Clone and enter
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/tunly.git && cd tunly

# Set your variables
export TUNLY_DOMAIN=yourdomain.com
export TUNLY_TOKEN=choose_a_strong_token

# Launch with one command
docker compose up -d

Tunly uses Caddy as a sidecar. It will automatically:

1. Provisions TLS certificates from Let's Encrypt.
2. Terminate SSL for your main domain.
3. Dynamically route traffic to active tunnels based on headers.

3. Client Usage

Download the binary for your platform (see Releases) or build from source:

# Build (requires Rust)
cargo build --release -p tunly-client

# Simple tunnel
./tunly-client http 8000 --server wss://yourdomain.com/tunnel --token your_token

# Multiple tunnels in one go
./tunly-client http 3000:web 4000:api 5000:worker --token your_token

🛡 License

MIT