Just getting started with self hosting. I was wondering if anyone had experience with Cloudflare Tunnels for exposing their services to the internet. I like the simplicity and security it offers but don’t love the idea of using Cloudflare. Like, I’m self hosting for a reason lol. Any tips would be greatly appreciated!
For context, I’m running all of my services in a very small k8s cluster and my priorities are mostly security then maintainability. Thanks yall!
EDIT: yall are great! Thank you so much for the replies. I’m going try my luck with pangolin but its good to know I have options.
Headscale is essentially a self-hosted, open-source alternative to Tailscale’s control server, enabling creation of a private WireGuard-based mesh VPN network. It lets you use Tailscale clients while running your own control server, focusing on secure device-to-device connections without exposing open ports. It requires a server with a public IP for the control server but does not natively manage reverse proxy or authentication for web services.
Pangolin is a more complete self-hosted solution built on WireGuard and Traefik, combining VPN tunneling with a modular reverse proxy and authentication management. It provides centralized management with role-based access control, 2-factor authentication, automated SSL via Let’s Encrypt, and can expose multiple private networks or services through secure tunnels without needing to open firewall ports. It includes a web UI and plugins for security features like WAF, API, and OAuth2/OIDC identity providers.
I see, so Pangolin includes the Tailscale Funnel functionality (which Headscale currently does not), integrates Authentik and Traefik, and sells it as a stand alone service. I guess there’s probably a narrow market for that, though it’s unlikely to be self-hosting. My experience is that any OAuth or RBAC solution is too involved and/or poorly supported by self-hosted applications to see more than a small number self-hosters using it, and those that do are advanced enough users that they would probably just build it themselves with free tools instead.
Pangolin is free for non commercial self-hosting purposes and used quite intensively in the Jellyfin community.