Caddy vs ngrok
Caddy
caddyserver.com
ngrok
ngrok.comSide by side
| Figure | Caddy | ngrok |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $25/mo | $10/mo |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 8 | 4 |
| Spec score · Reverse Proxy Software | 8.0 (#13) | 9.1 (#1) |
| Integrations | Caddy supports DNS challenge integrations for providers including Cloudflare, DigitalOcean, Route 53, and dozens of others through libdns. | Official documentation lists SDKs for Python, Go, Node and Rust and integrations including Okta SSO, Microsoft Entra ID and Datadog. |
| Platforms | The maker lists Linux, Windows, macOS, and Android among the operating systems Caddy supports. | The download page provides agents for macOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Docker, Docker Desktop, and Raspberry Pi, plus SDKs and Kubernetes tooling. |
| Support | Free community help is available through the forum; paid sponsorship tiers offer private support and other services depending on tier. | Paid support options include Dedicated On-Call with an 8 business hour SLA, plus Slack or Teams and 24×7 paging add-ons. |
Plans
Caddy
- Indie$25 a month
- Indie Pro$50 a month
- Startup$99 a month
- Startup Pro$249 a month
- Business$999 a month
- Business+$2,999 a month
- Enterprise$5,900 a month
- Enterprise+$11,900 a month
ngrok
- FreeFree
- Hobbyist$10 a month
- Pay-as-you-go$20 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
Caddy
Caddy is an extensible server platform used as a web server or proxy, and it is self-hosted. By default, it obtains and renews TLS certificates for sites and redirects HTTP to HTTPS. Its reverse proxy supports HTTP, HTTPS, WebSockets, gRPC, and FastCGI, along with load balancing and health checks. Configuration options include JSON through a RESTful API, the Caddyfile, and other adapters. Compile-time plugins extend its static binary. DNS challenge integrations include Cloudflare, DigitalOcean, Route 53, and other providers through libdns. Caddy can run as a command-line process, system service, container, Kubernetes workload, or embedded component. The software is free, with no paywalled features; sponsorship plans add services and support while leaving the license unchanged. Free community help is available through a forum. Caddy says its TLS defaults meet PCI DSS, NIST, and HIPAA compliance requirements, and that dependencies are verified with Go modules and release artifacts are cryptographically signed.
ngrok
ngrok is a cloud networking platform that secures, transforms, and routes traffic to services wherever they run. Its agent sends traffic through secure tunnels without requiring firewall changes. Traffic Policy uses CEL-based rules to route requests, authenticate them, apply rate limits or web application firewall controls, and reject them. Supported traffic includes HTTP, TLS, and TCP, including WebSockets, gRPC, SSH, Postgres, MQTT, and Minecraft. The Integrations Hub offers integrations and guides for areas such as SSO, databases, Kubernetes, OAuth, webhooks, and web servers. ngrok also verifies webhook signatures for more than 70 providers, including Stripe, GitHub, Twilio, Slack, and Shopify. The free plan includes $5 one-time usage, up to 3 online endpoints, up to 1GB data transfer, up to 20k HTTP/S requests, and one team member. Paid access starts at $10/mo. On Hobbyist, endpoints stop working when usage credit runs out, until the billing cycle ends and credit resets. ngrok lists region pinning across the United States, Europe, Asia Pacific, Australia, India, Japan, and South America.