ngrok vs Traefik Proxy
ngrok
ngrok.com
Traefik Proxy
traefik.ioSide by side
| Figure | ngrok | Traefik Proxy |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $10/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 4 |
| Spec score · Reverse Proxy Software | 9.1 (#1) | 8.3 (#10) |
| Spec score · Kubernetes Ingress Controllers | 8.7 (#3) | 8.2 (#6) |
| Company facts | ngrok was founded in 2015, is based in San Francisco and is listed by Crunchbase at 51–100 employees. | LinkedIn lists Traefik Labs as privately held, founded in 2016, headquartered in San Francisco with 11–50 employees and an additional Lyon location. |
| Documentation depth | The documentation includes quickstarts, conceptual guides, examples, Traffic Policy recipes and API reference pages. | Documentation includes personas, core concepts, getting-started guides, provider configuration, API/dashboard reference and product comparison material. |
| Founded | 2015 | 2016 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States | Lyon, France and San Francisco, USA |
| Integrations | Official documentation lists SDKs for Python, Go, Node and Rust and integrations including Okta SSO, Microsoft Entra ID and Datadog. | The project identifies Docker, Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, Consul, Etcd, Rancher and Amazon ECS among its supported infrastructure integrations. |
| Licence | The hosted ngrok service is proprietary under its terms, while several official SDK, Terraform and operator repositories are MIT licensed. | The Traefik source repository is distributed under the MIT License. |
| Observability | The platform logs configuration changes, authentication events and API calls and can stream events to SIEM systems. | Proxy includes real-time logs, access logs, metrics and distributed tracing. |
| Protocols | ngrok supports HTTP, TLS, and TCP, including WebSockets, gRPC, SSH, Postgres, MQTT, and Minecraft traffic. | Traefik Proxy supports WebSockets, HTTP/2, HTTP/3, TCP, UDP and gRPC traffic. |
| Public API | The API reference covers endpoints, domains, certificates, Traffic Policy, tunnels, observability, IAM, secrets and Kubernetes operators. | The API exposes read endpoints for routers, services, middlewares, entrypoints, configuration data, health information and version details. |
| Rating on G2 | 4.2 out of 5 from 15 reviews | 4.6 out of 5 from 35 reviews |
| Rating on TrustRadius | 0 out of 10 from 0 reviews | 7 out of 10 from 6 reviews |
| Support | Paid support options include Dedicated On-Call with an 8 business hour SLA, plus Slack or Teams and 24×7 paging add-ons. | Traefik Labs offers commercial support with expert assistance available 24/7/365. |
| What it does | ngrok is developer infrastructure that routes and secures traffic to applications, APIs and AI models. | Traefik Proxy is an open-source application proxy that automatically discovers services and routes requests across cloud, on-premises and bare-metal environments. |
Plans
ngrok
- FreeFree
- Hobbyist$10 a month
- Pay-as-you-go$20 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
Traefik Proxy
- Traefik ProxyFree
- Traefik Proxy Open SourceFree
- Traefik Hub API GatewayPriced on request
- Traefik Hub API ManagementPriced 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.
Traefik Proxy
Traefik Proxy is a free, open-source reverse proxy and ingress controller for deploying services and APIs. It discovers services and adjusts routing dynamically, supporting HTTP, HTTP/2, HTTP/3, TCP, UDP, WebSockets, and gRPC. Traffic controls include Layer 4 and Layer 7 routing, mirroring, blue-green and canary deployments, stickiness, and active health checks. Security options include automatic HTTPS, Let’s Encrypt, custom certificates, authentication, and Web Application Firewall support. Integrations span Kubernetes, Docker, Docker Swarm, Red Hat OpenShift, Rancher, Amazon ECS, Consul, and key-value stores. It supports deployment on environments including Kubernetes distributions, virtual machines, bare metal, Docker Swarm, and HashiCorp Nomad. Observability includes OpenTelemetry, a built-in dashboard, distributed tracing, and metrics integrations. WebAssembly plugins and a public plugin catalog provide extension options. Traefik Proxy is self-hosted and listed for Linux, macOS, and Windows. The plan is free; Traefik Labs also offers commercial support with expert assistance available 24/7/365.