Secure tunnels, from dev to production.

With encrypted tunnels, you can get live traffic to your development machine, just like in production.

inlets was built to run just as well in containers as on bare metal, and scales outs as you grow.

Are you ready to save on your cloud costs and forget about firewalls and NAT?

Start a tunnel
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Create your first tunnel with Alex

Announcing the inlets-cloud beta!

inlets-cloud is what we think a managed tunnel service should look like.
Verify your custom domain, create a managed tunnel, and get it connected - all within a few seconds.

Learn about inlets-cloud

Recent publications

Read tutorials, watch videos and catch up on new features from the inlets community.

Tutorial

Quickstart - Automate & Scale Tunnels with Inlets Uplink

Inlets Uplink is a complete solution for managing tunnels, that scales from anywhere from ten to tens of thousands of tunnels. Try it out in 30 mins with this quickstart.
Alex Ellis

Alex Ellis

Tutorial

SSH Into Any Private Host With Inlets Cloud

Inlets Cloud is a SaaS hosted version of inlets that can give you SSH access to any host on your network.
Alex Ellis

Alex Ellis

Tutorial

Get Real Client IPs with Ingress Nginx, Caddy or Traefik

Whether you're running a reverse proxy directly on a host, or an Ingress Controller in Kubernetes, you can get the real client IP with inlets.
Alex Ellis

Alex Ellis

Read more on the blog

A better way to connect

Bring public traffic to your local environment, or local traffic into a public cluster. Without managing VPNs or the limitations of SaaS solutions.

Connect what counts.

Inlets connects just the HTTP and TCP services that count to your network.

Your tunnels are secured by default so anything that you transfer over them is encrypted. And they'll work through the toughest network conditions such as NAT, firewalls and corporate proxies.

It was built for the cloud, which means it works well on bare-metal, in a container, on Kubernetes and has built-in support for Prometheus metrics, so you can monitor and measure your tunnels.

  • No sweat webhooks

    Not only can you share websites, blog posts drafts and APIs without publishing them on public cloud, but you can integrate directly with webhooks from Stripe, GitHub and Slack.

  • Save on cloud spend

    Make the most of your existing hardware investment, by bringing real traffic to your local machines.

  • Hybrid cloud, without the hassle

    Connect legacy applications, GPUs or private test environments to your public cloud account.

  • Your own Kubernetes cloud

    Get a cloud LoadBalancer for your local self-hosted Kubernetes cluster.

  • Connect to your customers with inlets uplink ™

    Connect hundreds or thousands of private customer networks or devices to your SaaS.

Expose multiple ports from a private network

A TCP tunnel exposing multiple ports

In TCP mode, traffic received on the server is sent directly to the client.

Self-host any HTTP endpoint with a HTTPS certificate

CLI example with a HTTPS cert from Let's Encrypt

Built-in Let's Encrypt makes it really easy to get users to access your private service.

Local Kubernetes, but with public IPs

CLI example showing Kubernetes integration

The inlets-operator for Kubernetes makes it look and feel like you're using a cloud Kubernetes cluster.

Add a new customer to your SaaS

CLI commands to add a new customer tunnel with inlets uplnk

Connect customer devices and services to your SaaS, the easy way with inlets uplink

Feature Comparison

To save you time, we've already compared inlets Pro to VPNs and managed SaaS tunnels.

inlets Pro SaaS Tunnel VPN
Setup Cost Low Low High
Self-hosting
Scope One or more ports or domains Single domain Entire subnets or host
Public TCP Ports Any Randomly Allocated/High ports None
Connection Rate-limiting Unlimited 60-260/min Unlimited
Expose with a Domain
Custom Domains (extra cost)
Connect Services Without Exposing Them
Kubernetes LoadBalancer integration
Data Sovereignty
Terms of Service Simple EULA Strict terms Varies
Compatible Network Configurations HTTP_PROXY, NAT and Captive Portals HTTP_PROXY, NAT and Captive Portals NAT

Feel free to get in touch with us with comments and questions.

Testimonials

"We're using inlets Pro to power our staging environments and give people preview build URLs. It's going great!"

"Riskfuel is using inlets to train machine learning models with millions of data points for clients over secure tunnels."

Addison van den Hoeven, DevOps Engineer @ Riskfuel

"We use inlets instead of Ngrok while developing with webhooks for our live chat product. This helps us develop integrations with Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Google Business, without facing rate-limits."

"Thanks to the inlets-operator, I can now test cert-manager during development on my local Kubernetes cluster"

Maël Valais, Kubernetes engineer

"We offer managed Kubernetes to regulated institutions in Switzerland. Our customers' VPCs do not allow for any incoming connections, so we use inlets to connect their OpenShift clusters to our product."

“We build a suite of managed products for Kubernetes, and inlets means that we can test our code locally without rebuilding and redeploying it for every change”

Janos Matyas, Banzai Cloud

"inlets Pro makes it easy for us to provide secure service and support of our Sense AI Platform deployed through cloud marketplaces, helping us deliver value sooner for our enterprise customers."

Frequently asked questions

How does inlets compare to Ngrok, Wireguard and Tailscale?

Read the FAQ to find out.

Can I try before I buy?

You can purchase a monthly subscription on a month-by-month basis and convert to yearly later for a discount.

Do I have to expose my applications on the Internet?

No, inlets Pro can bind to a private or local ethernet adapter. In that case, only the control-plane for the inlets client is available.

How does the license work?

For Gumroad subscriptions, you will receive a license token from Gumroad and need connectivity to validate the license upon startup. For an offline license, you will receive a JWT.

What happens when my license expires?

The client will crash after an initial grace period, or if restarted will not come up again. Renew in advance for static licenses, or keep your credit card up to date with Gumroad.

What is a tunnel-pair?

A "tunnel-pair" is an inlets Pro client and server - both parts form a tunnel. inlets Pro is self-hosted software.

Can I use my personal license at work and at home?

You can use your personal license at work for ad-hoc tunnels for webhooks and collaboration, but not as a part of the business or product. Read more.

How do I pay for inlets Pro?

You may can purchase a subscription from the Pricing page.

Where can I use inlets Pro?

inlets Pro can be used in any network because the client makes an outbound connection first to establish its link. This includes: NAT, Carrier Grade NAT (CGN), VPCs, containers, Kubernetes and even hotel WiFi.

Is inlets Open Source?

inlets Pro has a commercial license. inlets-operator and inletsctl automation tools are both licensed as MIT.

Can I pay for inlets Pro monthly?

Yes, or pay annually for a discount.

What if I want to add more "tunnel-pairs" during a period?

You can upgrade your subscription to the correct amount of tunnels at any time.

Does inlets Pro "call home"?

We trust our users to purchase the correct license, and upgrade if they exceed the tier usage. There is no "call home" mechanism in the stand-alone version. Inlets Uplink reports the total amount of tunnels.

What is the End User License Agreement for inlets?

View EULA.

Setup your first HTTPS or TCP tunnel today. It's private, self-hosted with no bandwidth or rate-limits.

View pricing