Tunnelto: Your Local Server, Now Public

Ever needed to share your local development server with a client, a teammate across the globe, or just test a webhook from an external service? We've all been there. You spin up a server on localhost:3000, and then the dance begins: deploying to a staging environment, messing with complex VPNs, or awkward screen sharing. It's a workflow bottleneck that feels like it should be solved by now.

What if you could just open a tunnel? That's exactly what Tunnelto does. It's a dead-simple tool that gives your localhost a public URL in seconds.

What It Does

Tunnelto is a command-line tool that creates a secure, temporary tunnel from the public internet to your local machine. You run it, point it at your local port (like 8080), and it instantly provides you with a unique, public *.tunnelto.dev URL. Anyone (or any service) with that link can access your local server as if it were live on the internet.

Why It's Cool

The beauty of Tunnelto is in its straightforwardness. There's no lengthy sign-up, no dashboard to manage, and no complex configuration. It's a single binary you run, and it just works. This makes it perfect for quick demos, testing webhooks from services like Stripe or GitHub, or getting immediate feedback on a feature.

Unlike some alternatives, Tunnelto uses your own subdomain, which can be customized on the fly. It also handles WebSocket connections seamlessly, making it great for real-time app testing. The implementation is clean and focused—it does one job and does it well without extra bloat.

How to Try It

Getting started takes about a minute. You can install it via Cargo (Rust's package manager) or grab a pre-built binary from the releases page.

# Install with Cargo
cargo install tunnelto

# Or download a binary for your OS from GitHub Releases

# To expose your local server on port 8000
tunnelto --port 8000

# Want a custom subdomain?
tunnelto --port 8000 --subdomain mycoolproject

After running the command, you'll see your public URL in the terminal. That's it. Your local server is now live at that address until you stop the process.

Final Thoughts

Tunnelto is one of those utilities that quietly removes a small but frequent point of friction. It's not trying to be a full-featured ngrok competitor; it's a sharp, focused tool for developers who need a public URL now. For quick collaboration, integration testing, or just showing off a work-in-progress, it's become a go-to in my toolkit. Next time you're about to say, "Just imagine this is live on the server...", try tunneling it instead.

Check out the project and star it on GitHub: agrinman/tunnelto

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