21tunnel vs ngrok — half the starter price, AI-agent ready

TL;DR

Pick ngrok if you want a proven track record. Pick us if you want a generous free tier + AI-agent primitives.

ngrok is the right call when you're solo-hacking and their free tier limits don't bite. We're the right call when you want more generous limits, per-tenant RBAC, a custom domain on the free tier, or master-key delegation for AI coding agents.

Choose ngrok when…

You don't want to think about infrastructure at all.
You need their specific integrations (Kubernetes Operator, some SaaS connectors) today.
Your workload fits inside their free-tier request cap.

Choose 21tunnel when…

You're wiring up an AI coding agent — master keys mint scoped child keys with one-click cascade revoke.
You want a custom domain on day one without paying.
You want a multi-tenant dashboard with RBAC, audit log, and MFA on the free tier — not paywalled.
You're price-sensitive: our Pro tier is about half ngrok's starter plan.

Feature by feature

What's actually in each product.

Everything below is a documented fact as of April 2026. If any row is wrong — ngrok's pricing changed, we missed a feature — email hey@21tunnel.com and we'll fix it.

	21tunnel	ngrok
Multi-tenant dashboard	✓	single-tenant your data lives on their infra
Language	Rust	Go
Transport	TLS 1.3 + yamux / TCP	TLS / QUIC
Reserved custom domain (free tier)	✓	—
Request cap on free tier ¹	unlimited	40 tunnels/min per their public plan limits
Concurrent tunnels (free)	3	1
TOTP MFA	free, all tiers	paid tiers
RBAC (owner/admin/member/viewer)	free, all tiers	enterprise tier
Audit log	all tiers	paid tiers
Webhook signature verification	pro+	paid tiers
Per-request fees	—	varies bandwidth + overage pricing on paid tiers
AI-agent master key (delegated mint + cascade revoke)	yes mtk_master_ + project namespaces	—
Request inspector (free tier)	✓	paid tiers

¹ ngrok's free-tier limits are public on their pricing page. 21tunnel's free tier has no request-rate cap; you're bounded by bandwidth only.

Pricing compared

You pay less, or nothing at all.

21tunnel's pricing is built to undercut every public ngrok tier. Migration from ngrok is a one-line config change.

	21tunnel	ngrok (published)
Hobby / personal	$0 3 tunnels, 10 Mbps/tunnel, 20k req/mo, 1 custom domain	Free plan 1 tunnel, ephemeral subdomain
Starter paid tier	$10/mo Pro 20 tunnels, 100 Mbps/tunnel, 500k req/mo, BYO domain	~$10/mo Personal their published starter tier
Per-user team tier	$25/user/mo Team 50 tunnels, 500 Mbps/tunnel, 5M req/mo, SSO, RBAC	~$20/user/mo Pro their published team tier
Enterprise	Custom · SSO · SLA	Custom

Start on Hobby (free forever) See full pricing

Migration

One-line change for most scripts.

We're shipping ngrok compat shims so your existing .ngrok.yml and CI scripts keep working. Here's what the everyday commands look like side-by-side.

Before ngrok

# expose a local port
ngrok http 3000

# with a reserved domain
ngrok http 3000 --domain=api.company.ngrok.app

# TCP tunnel
ngrok tcp 22

# config file
# ~/.ngrok/ngrok.yml
authtoken: 2a...
tunnels:
  api:
    proto: http
    addr: 3000
    domain: api.company.ngrok.app

After 21tunnel

# exact same ergonomics
mytunnel http 3000

# reserved domain — free tier
mytunnel http 3000 --domain=api.21tunnel.app

# TCP tunnel
mytunnel tcp 22

# native TOML config (no auto-import yet — copy by hand)
# ~/.21tunnel/config.toml
authtoken = "eyJ..."
[tunnels.api]
proto  = "http"
addr   = 3000
domain = "api.21tunnel.app"

Manual migration today. Recreate your reserved subdomains and tokens in the 21tunnel dashboard, then point mytunnel at the new server. A scripted --from-ngrok import is on the roadmap but not shipped — assume manual until we say otherwise.

If you're migrating because of AI agents: see our AI-agent guide — 21tunnel ships master keys + project namespaces + cascade revoke as first-class delegation primitives, which ngrok hasn't matched.

Just looking for a quick ngrok alternative summary? The short version lives at /ngrok-alternative/; this page is the deeper head-to-head.

Questions

Things everyone asks.

Is 21tunnel actually a drop-in replacement? +

For 90% of use cases, yes. ngrok http 3000 becomes mytunnel http 3000. Config files don't auto-migrate yet — you recreate the equivalent ~/.21tunnel/config.toml by hand (it's a small file). The specific features we don't have yet: a dedicated Kubernetes Operator (on the roadmap), some of the deeper traffic-policy connectors, and a handful of ngrok's enterprise-only agent flags. If any of those are load-bearing for you, stay on ngrok; we'll tell you when parity lands.

What about security? ngrok's been around forever. +

Fair. We're newer, and we're up-front about it — MVP-stage, ~5,000 lines of Rust with every unwrap, panic, and todo! as a deny-level lint, and #![forbid(unsafe_code)] at the crate root. Auth is argon2id + JWT + optional TOTP MFA + rotating refresh tokens with theft detection. The build log walks through the architecture. Use it knowing it's early.

Why should I trust your pricing will stay this aggressive? +

We're committing in writing: pricing changes to existing paid accounts require 90 days' notice, and we always offer a grandfathered tier. Hobby's marginal cost to us is measured in cents/user/month, so there's no pressure to claw it back.

Do you read my traffic? +

For the inspector, bodies and headers stream to your dashboard so you can see them. Replay is wired but currently gated server-side; once we ship per-tunnel allowlists it turns on. You can disable body logging per-tunnel in the dashboard, or run in end-to-end TLS passthrough where we route without decrypting.

Five-minute switch. Or five seconds.

Keep ngrok running. Point one tunnel at us as a test. If it's worse, you've lost five minutes. If it's better, you've cut your bill in half.

Start free Read the build log

21tunnel vs ngrok — honest comparison.