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Overview

Why "raba"?​

raba is Hausa for "to divide, separate, share, or distribute." Both senses map onto what this tool actually does: the "share/distribute" sense is the pitch — share your localhost with the world. The "divide/separate" sense is the exact problem being solved — bridging a machine that's cut off from the public internet by NAT or a firewall. The logo's arch, bridging two connection points, is a direct visual read of that same idea.

What it is​

raba is a self-hosted, open-source alternative to ngrok, Cloudflare Tunnel, and frp — HTTP, TCP, and UDP tunneling, deployed as a single Docker image you run yourself, managed through a web dashboard, with automated TLS for your own domain. See Features for the full breakdown, or Architecture for how it's actually built.

The tradeoff, stated upfront: unlike a hosted service, there's no free instant random URL — you need your own domain and a server to run raba on. In exchange, you own the whole stack; nothing you tunnel is routed through a third party.

Get started​

Two things to set up: a server (your own raba instance) and the CLI (what you run on your own machine to expose a local port). See Installation for prerequisites and the full walkthrough — automated and manual — or jump straight in:

# Server (interactive, see Installation for exactly what this does)
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/codad5/raba/master/install-server.sh | bash

# CLI
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/codad5/raba/master/install.sh | sh
raba login --server https://your-domain.example
raba http 3000

That's it — raba http 3000 creates a project (auto-generating a subdomain and picking your team for you if you only have one) and starts forwarding traffic from https://<subdomain>.your-domain.example to 127.0.0.1:3000. See the CLI Reference for every command.

What's next​

  • Installation — prerequisites, and the automated vs. manual setup walkthrough.
  • Features — HTTP/TCP/UDP tunneling, teams & custom domains, the dashboard, privacy.
  • CLI Reference — every raba command.
  • Architecture — how it's built, for readers who want more than "it's a tunnel."
  • File an issue or contribute on GitHub.