Envoy Proxy vs Openport

Envoy Proxy is a free, open-source proxy for edge traffic and service-to-service communication in cloud-native and AI-native applications. It runs as a self-contained process outside the application and can serve software written in different languages. Envoy handles HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2, gRPC, and HTTP/3, with HTTP/3 documented as alpha. Traffic features include routing, retries, circuit breaking, rate limiting, request shadowing, and outlier detection. It exposes subsystem statistics, an administration interface, and distributed tracing through third-party providers. Security features include TLS, JWT, role-based access control, and OAuth-related authorization and authentication. Operators must configure protections such as watermarks, overload management, and circuit breakers for availability resilience. Installation options include Docker images for amd64 and arm64, macOS Homebrew, and static binaries. Its API is compatible with Envoy Gateway and Istio.

Openport lets users make a local TCP port reachable from the internet without opening a firewall port. It builds a tunnel between a device and the outside world for remote access, and its web service and API can show online IoT devices and manage a fleet. Access can be controlled by user groups. The `--http-forward` option assigns a hostname to a session for serving a local port over HTTP and HTTPS with a valid certificate. Custom-domain forwarding requires a CNAME record and works over HTTPS only. With TLS passthrough, TLS ends on the user's machine, keeping tunnelled traffic encrypted end to end. Forwarded ports require visitors to click a token link by default; a clicked link remains valid for 24 hours. Openport also lists brute-force blocking and port-scanning detection. It supports API, Linux, macOS, web, and Windows. Since client 2.3.0, sessions can forward UDP as well as TCP on the same port when the server supports it. The service was founded in 2014 and offers a free plan, a 30-day trial, and paid plans from $1/mo.