Expose your local development server to the world, securely and effortlessly!

If you're a developer working on local HTTP, TCP, or WebSocket services and you’ve ever wished you could share your local environment with a teammate, client, or tester without deploying it — Portr is your new best friend. 🙌

Portr is a lightweight, SSH-based tunneling solution that helps you expose your local connections to the public internet. Think of it as a modern, open-source alternative to tools like ngrok — but using your own SSH server!

---

🔧 What is Portr?

Portr is a tunnel solution built with simplicity and flexibility in mind. It's ideal for developers, QA teams, and small teams needing to share local environments — without touching production. It supports:

✅ HTTP tunnels
✅ TCP tunnels
✅ WebSocket tunnels

👉 GitHub repo: https://github.com/amalshaji/portr

It uses SSH remote port forwarding under the hood, making it secure and self-hostable. No magic — just solid, familiar tools used smartly.

---

📹 Learn by Watching: DevOps in Action Series

Whether you're a visual learner or just love a good walkthrough, this 3-part YouTube series breaks down Portr beautifully. Highly recommended!

🎥 Part 1 - Introduction & Overview
🔗 Watch here

🎥 Part 2 - Server Configuration
🔗 Watch here

🎥 Part 3 - Client Setup
🔗 Watch here

These tutorials take you from setting up your Portr server to exposing your first local app — a perfect “zero to hero” guide. 🦸‍♂️

---

🛠️ Why Use Portr?

Here’s why Portr might be the right choice for your team:

• 🌍 Expose localhost to the world — test APIs, demos, or frontend builds with live URLs.

• 🔐 Secure tunneling with SSH — no need to trust third-party relay services.

• 💻 Open-source & self-hostable — full control, no surprises.

• 📦 Lightweight — no bloated installs or heavy dependencies.

Perfect for hackathons, dev showcases, QA testing, or internal demos.

---

⚙️ Quick Glance at Portr Components

1. Portr Tunnel – Sets up the actual tunnel.
2. Portr Proxy – Handles routing incoming traffic to your local server.
3. Server + Client Configuration – You configure SSH and the Portr binary to define where and how connections flow.

---

🚀 From Zero to Hero with Portr

Getting started is refreshingly simple:

# On your local machine (client)
portr --server yourdomain.com --port 3000

That's it. Now your localhost:3000 is publicly accessible! 🤯

---

📚 Final Thoughts

Portr is not meant to replace production-grade tools or APIs — but for dev use-cases, it’s a real gem 💎. Fast, secure, and yours to control. If you're part of a small team or an indie dev, give it a spin!

🔗 Explore more: https://portr.dev
🧑‍💻 Star the repo: https://github.com/amalshaji/portr

Have you tried Portr in your dev workflow? Let’s chat in the comments! 💬