tunnels.io vs localtunnel
The localtunnel alternative for when it actually matters.
localtunnel is a well loved MIT-licensed project with 22,434 stars, and for a throwaway demo it is genuinely fine. It is also a shared public instance with no account, no published SLA, no published bandwidth or request-rate figure, and no subdomain reserved to you. tunnels.io publishes every limit, reserves your URL, and gives you someone to talk to. The free plan is $0 and paid plans start at $4 a month.
The short answer
Both give your local server a public URL in one command. The difference is what you can rely on. localtunnel routes you through a shared public instance with no account and no published capacity figures, and the project is community maintained with infrequent releases. tunnels.io is a funded service with a published plan catalog, a URL that stays yours, and limits you can read before you hit them.
Price to start
$0 vs $0
Nobody wins on price here. localtunnel is free and MIT licensed. Our Basic plan is free too, with 4 GB a month, and Pro is $4.
Published capacity
1,024 req/s vs none
That is our free plan. localtunnel publishes no bandwidth figure and no request-rate figure, so there is nothing to plan against.
Last repository push
Aug 2025
Roughly eleven months ago, with 166 open issues. The project is not archived and not dead, but releases are infrequent.
Fine for a demo. The question is the day it has to work.
localtunnel sends your traffic through a public shared instance. There is no account, no authentication, and no published SLA or uptime guarantee. That is a completely reasonable trade for a five minute demo of a side project. It is a different trade when a client is on a call looking at your staging build, or when a payment provider is firing a webhook that has to land.
On that day there is nothing to check and no one to ask. The escalation path is a public issue tracker that currently holds 166 open issues, on a repository last pushed in August 2025. The maintainers do not owe you a response, and that is exactly how volunteer open source is supposed to work. It is just not the same thing as a service you are paying for.
tunnels.io is the other side of that trade. Every plan has published numbers, your subdomain stays reserved to your account, and there is no interstitial or warning page on any plan, including the free one. Traffic reaches your app.
Side by side
localtunnel figures taken from the project site and github.com/localtunnel/localtunnel via the GitHub API, verified 1 August 2026. tunnels.io figures from our live plan catalog; /pricing is always authoritative.
| localtunnel | tunnels.io Basic | tunnels.io Pro | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $0, MIT licensed | $0 | $4/mo, or $40/year |
| Data transfer out | No published figure | 4 GB/month | 128 GB/month included |
| Request rate | No published figure | 1,024 requests/second | 8,192 requests/second |
| Concurrent tunnels | No published figure | 1 | 5 |
| Account and authentication | None | Yes | Yes |
| Reserved subdomain | No accounts, so nothing is reserved to you | Random URL | Yes, up to 3 |
| Custom domain | Only if you run your own server | No | On Gold, $10/mo |
| Published SLA or uptime guarantee | None published | Managed service, published plan limits | Managed service, published plan limits |
| Install | npm install -g localtunnel, needs a Node toolchain | One binary, one command | One binary, one command |
| TCP tunnels | Not published | HTTP only | Yes |
| Self-hostable | Yes, run your own server | Managed service | Managed service |
| Source available | Yes, MIT, 22,434 stars | Managed service | Managed service |
Why people move
The URL stays yours
localtunnel has no accounts, so nothing is reserved to you. That is the moment most people switch: a webhook is registered against a URL, the tunnel restarts, and the URL has to still be there. Pro reserves up to three subdomains against your account, and Gold adds your own custom domains.
Numbers you can plan against
localtunnel publishes no bandwidth figure and no request-rate figure, so you find the ceiling by hitting it. We publish both on every plan: 1,024 requests per second and 4 GB on the free plan, 8,192 and 128 GB on Pro, up to an unlimited request rate and 512 GB on Premium.
One binary, no toolchain
localtunnel installs through npm, so every machine that needs it needs Node. Our client is a single binary with one command, built for macOS, Linux, Windows, FreeBSD and NetBSD. It drops onto a CI runner or a colleague's laptop without a package manager in the way.
Where localtunnel is genuinely stronger
It is completely free, and it is MIT licensed, so you can read and modify every line of it. There is no vendor to depend on at all, which is a real property and not a marketing one. Best of all, it is self-hostable: you can run your own localtunnel server and own the entire path from the browser to your laptop. If that is your requirement, no hosted service is going to beat it, and 22,434 people have starred it for good reason.
If you would rather not run and monitor that server yourself, and you want a reserved URL with published limits behind it, that is what we sell.
Questions
Is localtunnel still maintained?
It is community maintained with infrequent releases. The repository is not archived and the project has not been declared dead, but it was last pushed on 29 August 2025, roughly eleven months ago, and it currently has 166 open issues. Treat it as a stable community project rather than an actively developed one.
Why would I pay for tunnels.io when localtunnel is free?
For a throwaway demo you probably would not, and our free Basic plan covers that case anyway. You pay when you need a subdomain that stays yours between restarts, published bandwidth and request-rate limits, and an account behind the service. Pro is $4 a month with 128 GB of transfer and up to three reserved subdomains.
Does localtunnel have an SLA or an uptime guarantee?
No SLA or uptime guarantee is published, and there is no published bandwidth or request-rate figure either. It runs on a shared public instance with no account and no authentication. That is a fair trade for a free community service, but it means there is nothing to plan a client demo or a production webhook test around.
Can I keep the same URL between restarts?
On tunnels.io, yes on any paid plan. Pro includes up to three reserved subdomains held against your account, and Gold and above add your own custom domains. localtunnel has no accounts, so there is nothing reserved to you there.
How hard is it to switch from localtunnel?
It is a one command change. Instead of installing through npm you download a single binary for macOS, Linux, Windows, FreeBSD or NetBSD, authenticate once, and point it at the same local port. If you use a reserved subdomain you update the URL wherever it is registered, and that is the whole migration.
Can I self-host tunnels.io the way I can self-host localtunnel?
No. tunnels.io is a managed service, and self-hosting is the one place where localtunnel is clearly the better answer. If owning the whole path matters more to you than reserved URLs, published limits and a vendor to call, run your own localtunnel server instead.
Try it on the free plan first.
No credit card. Four gigabytes a month, 1,024 requests a second, no interstitial page, and a public HTTPS URL in about thirty seconds. See /pricing for the live plan catalog.
Also compare against ngrok, Cloudflare Tunnel, Tailscale and Serveo.