NPort

🚀 Free & open source ngrok alternative - Tunnel localhost to the internet via Cloudflare Edge

What is NPort?

NPort is a powerful, lightweight ngrok alternative that creates secure HTTP/HTTPS tunnels from your localhost to public URLs using Cloudflare's global edge network. No configuration, no accounts, just instant tunnels with custom subdomains!

Perfect for:

• 🚀 Development environments - Share your local work instantly
• 🔒 Testing webhooks - Receive webhooks from GitHub, Stripe, PayPal, etc.
• 📱 Mobile testing - Test your web app on real devices
• 🛠️ API development - Debug integrations with external services
• 👥 Demo to clients - Show your progress without deployment

✨ Features

• ⚡ Instant Setup: One command to expose your localhost
• 🌐 Custom Subdomains: Choose your own URL (e.g., myapp.nport.link)
• 🔒 Automatic HTTPS: SSL/TLS encryption via Cloudflare
• 🌍 Global Edge Network: Fast connections worldwide via Cloudflare
• 📡 WebSocket Support: Full WebSocket and Server-Sent Events support
• 🎯 No Configuration: Works out of the box
• 💻 Cross-Platform: Windows, macOS, and Linux support
• 🆓 100% Free: No accounts, no limits, no paywalls
• 🔓 Open Source: MIT licensed

📦 Installation

NPM (Recommended)

# Global installation
npm install -g nport

# Or use npx without installation
npx nport 3000 -s myapp

From GitHub

npm install -g git+https://github.com/tuanngocptn/nport.git

🚀 Quick Start

Basic Usage

Expose port 3000 with a random subdomain:

nport 3000

Output:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  NPort - Free & Open Source ngrok Alternative
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  🌐 Website: https://nport.link
  📦 NPM:     https://www.npmjs.com/package/nport
  💻 GitHub:  https://github.com/tuanngocptn/nport
  ☕ Support: https://buymeacoffee.com/tuanngocptn
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🚀 Starting Tunnel for port 3000...
✔ Tunnel created!
🌍 Public URL: https://user-1234.nport.link

Custom Subdomain

Choose your own subdomain:

nport 3000 -s myapp
# Creates: https://myapp.nport.link

Or using long form:

nport 3000 --subdomain myapp

📖 Usage Examples

Web Development

# Next.js
npm run dev
nport 3000 -s my-nextjs-app

# React (Create React App)
npm start
nport 3000 -s my-react-app

# Vue.js
npm run dev
nport 8080 -s my-vue-app

# Express.js
node server.js
nport 3000 -s my-api

Webhook Testing

# Start your local webhook receiver
node webhook-receiver.js

# Expose it to the internet
nport 4000 -s my-webhooks

# Use in GitHub webhook settings:
# https://my-webhooks.nport.link/webhook

Mobile Device Testing

# Start your local dev server
npm run dev

# Create tunnel
nport 3000 -s mobile-test

# Open on your phone:
# https://mobile-test.nport.link

🎯 CLI Options

nport <port> [options]

Option	Short	Description	Example
<port>	-	Local port to tunnel (default: 8080)	nport 3000
--subdomain	-s	Custom subdomain	nport 3000 -s myapp
-s=value	-	Alternative format	nport 3000 -s=myapp

🔧 How It Works

1. You run nport 3000 -s myapp
2. NPort creates a Cloudflare Tunnel
3. DNS record is created: myapp.nport.link → Cloudflare Edge
4. Cloudflared binary connects your localhost:3000 to Cloudflare
5. Traffic flows through Cloudflare's global network to your machine
6. On exit (Ctrl+C), tunnel and DNS are automatically cleaned up

Internet → Cloudflare Edge → Cloudflare Tunnel → Your localhost:3000
         (https://myapp.nport.link)

🛡️ Security

• HTTPS by default: All tunnels use SSL/TLS encryption
• Cloudflare protection: DDoS protection and security features
• Automatic cleanup: Tunnels are removed when you stop the process
• No data logging: We don't store or log your traffic

🆚 Comparison with ngrok

Feature	NPort	ngrok
Price	100% Free	Free tier limited
Custom subdomains	✅ Always	❌ Paid only
HTTPS	✅ Always	✅
Account required	❌ No	✅ Yes
Time limits	❌ None	⚠️ Free tier limited
Open source	✅ MIT	❌ Proprietary
Global network	✅ Cloudflare	✅ ngrok Edge

🧹 Cleanup

NPort automatically cleans up resources when you:

• Press Ctrl+C to exit
• Kill the process
• Terminal closes

The cleanup process:

1. ✅ Deletes DNS record (myapp.nport.link)
2. ✅ Removes Cloudflare Tunnel
3. ✅ Stops cloudflared process

🐛 Troubleshooting

Binary not found

If you see "Cloudflared binary not found":

npm install -g nport --force

Port already in use

Make sure your local server is running on the specified port:

# Check if something is listening on port 3000
lsof -i :3000  # macOS/Linux
netstat -ano | findstr :3000  # Windows

Subdomain already taken

Choose a different subdomain name:

nport 3000 -s myapp-v2

Connection issues

The ERR Cannot determine default origin certificate path warning is harmless and can be ignored. It appears because cloudflared checks for certificate-based authentication (we use token-based instead).

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

💖 Support

If you find NPort useful, please consider supporting the project:

• ⭐ Star on GitHub
• ☕ Buy me a coffee
• 💬 Share with your friends and colleagues
• 🐛 Report bugs

📄 License

MIT License - Feel free to use NPort in your projects!

🙏 Credits

• Created by Nick Pham 🇻🇳
• Powered by Cloudflare Tunnels
• Inspired by ngrok and localtunnel

🔗 Links

• 🌐 Website: https://nport.link
• 📦 NPM: https://www.npmjs.com/package/nport
• 💻 GitHub: https://github.com/tuanngocptn/nport
• 📧 Email: tuanngocptn@gmail.com

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Made with ❤️ by Nick Pham