Use cases
What people build with tunnels.io.
One mechanism, nine jobs. A local port gets a public address, and whether that port is a web server, an sshd, a database or a Minecraft world only changes what you type after it. Every page below has the commands, the honest limits and the plan it needs.
Development and testing
These are HTTPS tunnels, so they all start on the free plan. Free gives one tunnel at a time and a subdomain that changes on restart, which is the reason people upgrade rather than the protocol.
Webhook development
Receive real Stripe, GitHub and Shopify deliveries on your own machine, and see every one of them in the local inspector.
Real-device testing
A public HTTPS URL your phone can reach from any network, including cellular, where nothing on your own LAN can help.
Preview URLs in CI
A reachable URL for every pull request, for end-to-end tests and for the reviewer who wants to click something.
Raw TCP
Bytes forwarded without caring what protocol they are. Raw TCP tunnels start on the Professional plan at $4 a month; the free plan is HTTPS only.
SSH access
Reach an sshd on a machine with no public IP, without touching the router in front of it. Shells, scp, rsync and git over SSH all ride the same tunnel.
Database access
Hand a teammate a connection string to the Postgres, MySQL, Redis or Mongo running on your own machine, then close the tunnel when they are done.
Remote desktop
RDP or VNC into a machine that has no public address and no port forward. Fine for administration, poor for video.
Minecraft (Java)
Friends join a world running at your house with no router change. Java Edition is TCP, so it works. Bedrock is UDP, and we do not carry UDP.
Always on
For a machine that runs permanently and that you cannot reach any other way.
Homelab and self-hosting
Your ISP put you behind CGNAT and will not give you a port to forward. An outbound tunnel does not need one, and bandwidth is the thing to budget for.
IoT and embedded
A device on a customer's network you will never have access to. There are published armv7 and arm64 builds for exactly this.
Not sure which one you are doing?
Start on the free plan and find out. If you want the mechanism first, the explanations cover what a tunnel is and why an outbound connection reaches where an inbound one cannot. If you are weighing us against something else, there are honest comparisons including where the other tool wins.