ngrok vs Piko
ngrok
ngrok.comPiko
github.comSide by side
| Figure | ngrok | Piko |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $10/mo | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 0 |
| Spec score · Reverse Proxy Software | 9.1 (#1) | 7.2 (#22) |
| Authentication | Edge authentication supports OAuth, OpenID Connect, SAML, JWT validation, mutual TLS and IP rules. | Piko can verify client JWTs using HMAC, RSA, or ECDSA keys, with optional endpoint access restrictions in JWT claims. |
| Integrations | Official documentation lists SDKs for Python, Go, Node and Rust and integrations including Okta SSO, Microsoft Entra ID and Datadog. | Piko provides a Go SDK and documents hosting behind a Kubernetes Gateway or HTTP load balancer. |
| Load balancing | Endpoint pooling load-balances traffic across multiple agents and can fail over to healthy backends. | Requests are load balanced among available upstreams listening on the same endpoint. |
| Observability | The platform logs configuration changes, authentication events and API calls and can stream events to SIEM systems. | Piko provides a Prometheus endpoint, access logging, and a status API for monitoring and debugging. |
| Protocols | ngrok supports HTTP, TLS, and TCP, including WebSockets, gRPC, SSH, Postgres, MQTT, and Minecraft traffic. | Piko supports HTTP, HTTPS, and TCP traffic. |
| Support | Paid support options include Dedicated On-Call with an 8 business hour SLA, plus Slack or Teams and 24×7 paging add-ons. | The project directs users to GitHub Discussions for questions, help, and ideas. |
| What it does | ngrok is developer infrastructure that routes and secures traffic to applications, APIs and AI models. | Piko is a reverse proxy that tunnels traffic to services that are not publicly routable. |
Plans
ngrok
- FreeFree
- Hobbyist$10 a month
- Pay-as-you-go$20 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
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.