Cloudflare Tunnel is excellent at what it does. It also wasn't designed for the same job we're trying to solve. Here's the honest comparison so you can pick correctly the first time rather than migrating in three months.
Cloudflare Tunnel is part of Cloudflare's Zero Trust / edge platform. It's the right call when you're already on Cloudflare and want tunnels as one feature in that box. We're a tunnel-first product with no DNS dependency, no account-model lock-in, and a multi-tenant dashboard for teams who want to give tunnels to their users.
localhost:3000 to a public URL — no DNS setup required.Documented as of April 2026. If anything has changed on Cloudflare's side, email hey@21tunnel.com and we'll fix the row.
| 21tunnel | Cloudflare Tunnel | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary use case | Public URL for any local service | Edge-mounted services + Zero Trust ingress |
| Account model 1 | Hosted SaaS (Hobby tier free) | Cloudflare account domain on Cloudflare DNS for custom hostnames |
| Free tier | Yes — 3 tunnels, 10 Mbps/tunnel, 20k req/mo, custom domain | Yes — generous for most use cases |
| Custom domain (free tier) 1 | yes — but on Cloudflare DNS | |
| Multi-tenant dashboard | no — single Cloudflare account model | |
| Open-source agent 2 | MIT + Apache-2.0 | Open-source agent source published; control plane proprietary |
| Open-source server | ||
| Self-hostable end to end | ||
| DDoS / WAF | basic rate-limit | Cloudflare WAF + DDoS world-class on paid tiers |
| Edge regions | 1 (US-East, MVP) multi-region on roadmap | global anycast Cloudflare's full edge |
| Live request inspector | all tiers (replay coming) | limited via dashboard analytics |
| Webhook signature verify (edge) | Pro+ | no built-in (handle in your origin) |
| Per-tunnel auth (OIDC, basic) | yes — via Cloudflare Access | |
| AI-agent master key (delegated mint + cascade revoke) | yes mtk_master_ + project namespaces | |
| Pricing | $0 / $5 / $15 / Custom | Free for many uses; Zero Trust paid edge bandwidth bundled with other CF products |
The two products started from different premises and that shapes everything they're good at.
Built around the Cloudflare edge. Your cloudflared
agent dials out to a Cloudflare PoP; traffic enters at the
edge, runs through the WAF / Bot Management /
optimisations, then crosses to your origin via the tunnel.
The strength is everything that also happens at Cloudflare's edge: DDoS absorption, caching for static assets, Workers running ahead of your origin, Zero Trust policies enforced before traffic ever reaches you.
The trade-off is the full thing comes as a bundle. Custom hostname needs Cloudflare DNS. Access control hooks into Zero Trust. Inspection lives in their analytics. If you want pieces of this without the rest, the abstractions don't cleanly let you take them.
Built around the tunnel itself. The agent dials out to our edge over TLS 1.3 + yamux; traffic enters at the same edge and crosses to your origin. That's the entire critical path.
The strength is simplicity: mytunnel http 3000
and you're done. Custom domain via CNAME — your DNS
stays where it is. Inspector built into the agent and the
dashboard. Auth gates that you opt into when you need them,
not a full Zero Trust adoption.
The trade-off is we're not (yet) a global edge. Single region for MVP; multi-region on the roadmap. If your audience is genuinely global and 50ms matters more than 5ms of agent control, Cloudflare Tunnel will be faster from far-away regions today.
If you're testing the waters, this is what the syntax difference looks like.
# Quick public URL (random subdomain)
cloudflared tunnel --url http://localhost:3000
# Authenticated, with custom hostname (requires CF DNS):
cloudflared login
cloudflared tunnel create my-app
cloudflared tunnel route dns my-app app.example.com
cloudflared tunnel run my-app
# Configuration via YAML:
# ~/.cloudflared/config.yml
tunnel: my-app
credentials-file: /root/.cloudflared/my-app.json
ingress:
- hostname: app.example.com
service: http://localhost:3000
- service: http_status:404# Quick public URL (assigned subdomain)
mytunnel http 3000
# Authenticated, with custom hostname (any DNS):
# Add a CNAME on your DNS:
# app.example.com CNAME alice.21tunnel.app
mytunnel http 3000 --domain=app.example.com
# Configuration via TOML:
# ~/.21tunnel/config.toml
authtoken = "eyJ..."
[tunnels.app]
proto = "http"
addr = 3000
domain = "app.example.com"The DNS difference. With Cloudflare Tunnel, your domain's nameservers point at Cloudflare. With us, your DNS stays wherever it already is — you just add one CNAME record on the subdomain. Neither approach is wrong; they're just different defaults that affect who else in your team needs to be looped in.
You don't have to. Hobby is free forever — 3 tunnels, 10 Mbps per tunnel, 20k requests/month, custom domain on signup. The paid tiers are for teams who want more concurrent tunnels, longer retention, or SSO + RBAC for shared workspaces. Compare the free tiers carefully — both are generous in different ways.
With us, yes — your DNS provider doesn't change. Add a CNAME pointing to your reserved 21tunnel subdomain and you're done. With Cloudflare Tunnel's authenticated mode, the canonical setup expects the domain to be on Cloudflare DNS. Both approaches work; we just don't require the migration.
They do, and it's real. We don't — we're single-region while we ship the MVP, with multi-region on the roadmap. If global edge presence is a hard requirement today, Cloudflare Tunnel will outperform us from far-away geographies. For dev sharing, webhook testing, mobile testing, and most CI workflows, 50 vs 5ms doesn't matter — the tunnel is faster than the dev server it front-loads. Pick honestly.
Stay on Cloudflare. We're not trying to pull anyone off the Cloudflare platform — that ecosystem story is real and integrated. We're for the people who want tunnels without buying into a full edge platform, or who specifically need open-source server + multi-tenant dashboard.
If you're building a product where your customers should each have their own tunnels under your brand, that's multi-tenant by default. We ship orgs + members + RBAC + per-org billing as primitives. With Cloudflare Tunnel, every customer would need their own Cloudflare account and you'd glue the tunnels together yourself. Both work; ours is built for this shape.
Free tier, no credit card, custom domain on signup. Try us for one tunnel and keep Cloudflare for everything else.