Who is Inlets best for?

Inlets is built for Individual developers and homelab enthusiasts needing public endpoints without port-forwarding, Developer advocates and demo engineers sharing live services in workshops or customer demos, SaaS and ISV platform teams needing connectivity to private customer networks or on-prem deployments, Platform and DevOps engineers running private or local Kubernetes clusters requiring LoadBalancer IPs. Common use cases include Receiving webhooks from Stripe, GitHub, Slack during local development; Staging and preview environments with stable public URLs; SaaS vendor connectivity to private customer on-premises networks or VPCs.

How is Inlets priced?

Three tiers are available on a monthly (no-commitment) or annual basis. Personal: $25/mo includes 5 tunnels for non-commercial personal/homelab use (no email support). Pro Commercial: $25/mo per tunnel for commercial use, includes email support and a free onboarding call. Inlets Uplink: $250/mo per Kubernetes cluster includes 10 tunnels; additional tunnels cost $25/mo each (volume pricing available). Annual subscriptions offer a reduced rate (~$20/mo equivalent for Personal). A static license for air-gapped environments is available on request. A 50% discount on the first month of Uplink is offered for evaluation via a work email contact.

What are the alternatives to Inlets?

Common Developer Tunnels & Localhost Ingress alternatives to Inlets include Cloudflare, Tailscale, ngrok, Pinggy, LocalXpose. See the full comparison hub at /verticals/developer-tunnels-localhost-ingress/compare.

What do users praise about Inlets?

Users frequently praise: Self-hosted data plane with full data privacy; No rate limits or connection throttling; Purpose-built for Kubernetes and containers; Works through NAT, firewalls, and corporate proxies; Local forwarding as a kubectl port-forward replacement; Fast setup via inletsctl automated VM provisioning; Lightweight binary with low RAM footprint; CNCF Landscape recognized.

What are common complaints about Inlets?

Frequently cited limitations: Requires managing and paying for exit-server VMs; No free commercial tier; Gumroad license requires internet connectivity at runtime; Uplink requires a Kubernetes cluster prerequisite; Small team limits enterprise support depth; More operational complexity than fully-managed SaaS tunnels.

When was Inlets founded and where?

Inlets was founded in 2019, headquartered in Peterborough, UK by Alex Ellis.

AI visibility report

Inlets ranks #9 in Developer Tunnels & Localhost Ingress AI search.

Outside the top three on 24 of the 25 prompts buyers actually ask.

Cloudflare is cited on 17 of those losses.

25 prompts

6 platforms

Updated Sep 9, 2026 - refreshed weekly

Track Inlets daily

14-day free trial. No card required. Setup comes pre-filled for Inlets.

Track Inlets across these prompts daily.

Start your 14-day trial

1percent

Presence Rate

Low presence

#9 among 10 vendors · still absent from 98.7% of tracked prompt responses

Top-3 citations across 150 prompt × platform pairs

+0.30

Sentiment

-1.00.0+1.0

Positive

#9of 10

Peer Ranking

#1#10

Below averagein Developer Tunnels & Localhost Ingress

Key Metrics

Presence Rate

1.3%

Share of Voice

1.2%

Avg Position

#46.0

Docs Presence

0.7%

Blog Presence

0.0%

Brand Mentions

0.0%

Platform Breakdown

Grok

8%2/25 prompts

Research dossierCapabilities, use cases, sources, reviews, pricing, and FAQ

Overview

Inlets is a cloud-native tunnel product developed by OpenFaaS Ltd, a UK-based company founded by Alex Ellis. Launched publicly in early 2019, it enables developers and platform teams to expose HTTP and TCP services from private networks—including those behind NAT, firewalls, and corporate proxies—without relying on shared SaaS infrastructure. Unlike managed tunnel services, Inlets runs on servers the user controls, eliminating vendor rate limits and data-privacy concerns. The product family includes inlets Pro for individual and small-team use, Inlets Uplink for Kubernetes-native multi-tenant customer connectivity, and Inlets Cloud for fully managed tunnels. Open-source tooling (inletsctl, inlets-operator) supports automated provisioning on major cloud providers and Kubernetes clusters. It is listed on the CNCF Landscape under Service Proxy.

AI visibility report

Inlets ranks #9 in Developer Tunnels & Localhost Ingress AI search.

Outside the top three on 24 of the 25 prompts buyers actually ask.

Cloudflare is cited on 17 of those losses.

25 prompts

6 platforms

Updated Sep 9, 2026 - refreshed weekly

Track Inlets daily

14-day free trial. No card required. Setup comes pre-filled for Inlets.

Track Inlets across these prompts daily.

Start your 14-day trial

1percent

Presence Rate

Low presence

#9 among 10 vendors · still absent from 98.7% of tracked prompt responses

Top-3 citations across 150 prompt × platform pairs

+0.30

Sentiment

-1.00.0+1.0

Positive

#9of 10

Peer Ranking

#1#10

Below averagein Developer Tunnels & Localhost Ingress

Key Metrics

Presence Rate

1.3%

Share of Voice

1.2%

Avg Position

#46.0

Docs Presence

0.7%

Blog Presence

0.0%

Brand Mentions

0.0%

Platform Breakdown

Grok

8%2/25 prompts

Research dossierCapabilities, use cases, sources, reviews, pricing, and FAQ

Overview

Reviews

Praised

Self-hosted data plane with full data privacy
No rate limits or connection throttling
Purpose-built for Kubernetes and containers
Works through NAT, firewalls, and corporate proxies
Local forwarding as a kubectl port-forward replacement
Fast setup via inletsctl automated VM provisioning
Lightweight binary with low RAM footprint
CNCF Landscape recognized

Criticized

Requires managing and paying for exit-server VMs
No free commercial tier
Gumroad license requires internet connectivity at runtime
Uplink requires a Kubernetes cluster prerequisite
Small team limits enterprise support depth
More operational complexity than fully-managed SaaS tunnels

No formal scores on G2, Gartner Peer Insights, or Capterra were found for Inlets. Qualitative testimonials published on the inlets.dev website indicate positive adoption among developers for webhook testing, preview environments, and Kubernetes ingress, as well as SaaS teams using Uplink to reach private customer networks. Community sentiment on GitHub and developer blogs highlights appreciation for the no-rate-limit model, Kubernetes-native design, and local forwarding capability. Recurring friction points noted in community content include the need to manage exit-server VMs and the cost relative to free SaaS alternatives.

Prompt	Google AI Mode	ChatGPT	Gemini Search	Bing Copilot	Perplexity	Grok
Capability1/5 cited (20%)
What tools let me securely tunnel into a private network from anywhere without setting up a traditional VPN?	A competitor was cited	A competitor was cited	A competitor was cited	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited	A competitor was cited	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited
Which secure access tools provide identity-aware proxies for SSH, databases, and Kubernetes API access?

#	Brand	PresencePres.	Share of VoiceSoV	DocsDocs	BlogBlog	MentionsMent.	Avg PosPos	Sentiment
1	Cloudflare	28.7%	29.0%	24.0%	3.3%	0.0%	#22.6	+0.38
2	Tailscale	20.7%	21.0%	11.3%	4.7%	0.0%	#31.8	+0.25
3	ngrok	19.3%	20.5%	15.3%	7.3%	0.0%	#15.6	+0.30
4	Pinggy	16.0%	12.3%	2.0%	15.3%	0.0%	#31.1	+0.26
5	LocalXpose	12.7%	8.0%	0.0%	8.7%	0.0%	#21.4	+0.20
6	Teleport	4.0%	4.6%	2.0%	0.7%	0.0%	#30.1	+0.48
7	NetBird	2.7%	1.9%	0.7%	0.0%	0.0%	#29.1	+0.42
8	NetFoundry	2.0%	1.4%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	#56.3	+0.43
9	Inlets	1.3%	1.2%	0.7%	0.0%	0.0%	#46.0	+0.30
10	PageKite	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	—	—

Developer Experience0/5 cited (0%)
What tunneling tools work best for developers building integrations with external APIs that need to call back to localhost?	A competitor was cited	A competitor was cited	A competitor was cited	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited	A competitor was cited	A competitor was cited

Integrations & Ecosystem1/5 cited (20%)
What tunneling solutions integrate well with edge platforms or CDNs to combine tunneling with caching and WAF?	A competitor was cited	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited	A competitor was cited	A competitor was cited

Performance & Reliability0/5 cited (0%)
Which localhost tunneling services have unlimited bandwidth on their paid tiers?	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited	A competitor was cited	A competitor was cited	A competitor was cited	A competitor was cited

Inlets ranks #9 in Developer Tunnels & Localhost Ingress AI search.

Key Metrics

Platform Breakdown

Overview

Inlets ranks #9 in Developer Tunnels & Localhost Ingress AI search.

Key Metrics

Platform Breakdown

Overview

Prompts where competitors are visible and Inlets is not.

Where Inlets is winning

Where Inlets is losing5

Key Facts

Key Capabilities10

Key Use Cases8

Inlets customer outcomes

Recent Trend

How AI describes Inlets2

Most cited sources4

Alternatives in Developer Tunnels & Localhost Ingress6

Reviews

Pricing

Limitations

Topic Coverage

Prompt-Level Results

Vertical Ranking

Turn this into your team dashboard

Frequently asked questions

Setup & First Run0/5 cited (0%)
Which localhost tunneling solutions don't require me to install a binary or sign up for an account?	A competitor was cited	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited	A competitor was cited	A competitor was cited

Inlets ranks #9 in Developer Tunnels & Localhost Ingress AI search.

Key Metrics

Platform Breakdown

Overview

Inlets ranks #9 in Developer Tunnels & Localhost Ingress AI search.

Key Metrics

Platform Breakdown

Overview

Prompts where competitors are visible and Inlets is not.

Where Inlets is winning

Where Inlets is losing5

Key Facts

Key Capabilities10

Key Use Cases8

Inlets customer outcomes

Recent Trend

How AI describes Inlets2

Most cited sources4

Alternatives in Developer Tunnels & Localhost Ingress6

Reviews

Pricing

Limitations

Topic Coverage

Prompt-Level Results

Vertical Ranking

Turn this into your team dashboard

Frequently asked questions

What does Inlets do?

Who is Inlets best for?

How is Inlets priced?

What are the alternatives to Inlets?

What do users praise about Inlets?

What are common complaints about Inlets?

When was Inlets founded and where?

How big is Inlets?