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Cloudflare Tunnel vs Chisel: catalog facts
Cloudflare Tunnel	Chisel
Freemium cloudflared is free and open source, and Cloudflare Tunnel is available on Cloudflare's…	Free Free and open source under the MIT licence.
Windows, macOS, Linux, Command line	Windows, macOS, Linux, Command line
No inbound ports opened; the daemon connects outbound to Cloudflare Works behind carrier-grade NAT where port forwarding is impossible	Single static binary acts as both ends of the tunnel Works through HTTP proxies and restrictive egress filtering
Requires a Cloudflare account and a domain on Cloudflare Your traffic passes through Cloudflare, which is a dependency and a trust decision	Tunnelling out of a network can breach policy; get permission first No traffic shaping or access control beyond the SSH layer
Downloadable app	Downloadable app
Open source	Open source
License: Apache-2.0	License: MIT
Account needed	Not stated if an account is needed
Needs internet	Not stated if it works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 21, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 22, 2026

Catalog facts only. Anything “not stated” is unconfirmed. Check full listings for details.