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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Infrastructure as a Service
  4. Virtualization Platform
  5. VirtualBox vs ngrok

VirtualBox vs ngrok

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

VirtualBox
VirtualBox
Stacks31.1K
Followers25.6K
Votes1.1K
ngrok
ngrok
Stacks420
Followers457
Votes57
GitHub Stars24.4K
Forks4.3K

ngrok vs VirtualBox: What are the differences?

Developers describe ngrok as "Securely expose a local web server to the internet and capture all traffic for detailed inspection and replay". ngrok is a reverse proxy that creates a secure tunnel between from a public endpoint to a locally running web service. ngrok captures and analyzes all traffic over the tunnel for later inspection and replay. On the other hand, VirtualBox is detailed as "Run nearly any operating system on a single machine and to freely switch between OS instances running simultaneously". VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2.

ngrok belongs to "localhost Tools" category of the tech stack, while VirtualBox can be primarily classified under "Virtualization Platform".

Some of the features offered by ngrok are:

  • Expose any http service behind a NAT or firewall to the internet on a subdomain of ngrok.com
  • Expose any tcp service behind a NAT or firewall to the internet on a random port of ngrok.com
  • Inspect all http requests/responses that are transmitted over the tunnel

On the other hand, VirtualBox provides the following key features:

  • Portability
  • No hardware virtualization required
  • Guest Additions: shared folders, seamless windows, 3D virtualization

"Easy to use" is the top reason why over 18 developers like ngrok, while over 357 developers mention "Free" as the leading cause for choosing VirtualBox.

ngrok is an open source tool with 16.5K GitHub stars and 2.87K GitHub forks. Here's a link to ngrok's open source repository on GitHub.

According to the StackShare community, VirtualBox has a broader approval, being mentioned in 724 company stacks & 975 developers stacks; compared to ngrok, which is listed in 26 company stacks and 16 developer stacks.

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Detailed Comparison

VirtualBox
VirtualBox
ngrok
ngrok

VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2.

ngrok is a reverse proxy that creates a secure tunnel between from a public endpoint to a locally running web service. ngrok captures and analyzes all traffic over the tunnel for later inspection and replay.

Portability;No hardware virtualization required;Guest Additions: shared folders, seamless windows, 3D virtualization;Great hardware support;Multigeneration branched snapshots;VM groups;Clean architecture; unprecedented modularity;Remote machine display
Expose any http service behind a NAT or firewall to the internet on a subdomain of ngrok.com;Expose any tcp service behind a NAT or firewall to the internet on a random port of ngrok.com;Inspect all http requests/responses that are transmitted over the tunnel;Replay any request that was transmitted over the tunnel
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
24.4K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
4.3K
Stacks
31.1K
Stacks
420
Followers
25.6K
Followers
457
Votes
1.1K
Votes
57
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 358
    Free
  • 231
    Easy
  • 169
    Default for vagrant
  • 110
    Fast
  • 73
    Starts quickly
Pros
  • 26
    Easy to use
  • 11
    Super-fast
  • 7
    Free
  • 6
    Awesome traffic analysis page
  • 5
    Reliable custom domains
Cons
  • 5
    Doesn't Support UDP
  • 1
    El tunel SSH cambia de dominio constantemente
Integrations
No integrations available
Twilio SendGrid
Twilio SendGrid
GitHub
GitHub
Slack
Slack

What are some alternatives to VirtualBox, ngrok?

Proxmox VE

Proxmox VE

It is a complete open-source platform for all-inclusive enterprise virtualization that tightly integrates KVM hypervisor and LXC containers, software-defined storage and networking functionality on a single platform, and easily manages high availability clusters and disaster recovery tools with the built-in web management interface.

VMware vSphere

VMware vSphere

vSphere is the world’s leading server virtualization platform. Run fewer servers and reduce capital and operating costs using VMware vSphere to build a cloud computing infrastructure.

Termius

Termius

The #1 cross-platform terminal with built-in ssh client which works as your own portable server management system in any situation.

KVM

KVM

KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions (Intel VT or AMD-V).

GoTTY

GoTTY

GoTTY is a simple command line tool that turns your CLI tools into web applications.

Qemu

Qemu

When used as a machine emulator, it can run OSes and programs made for one machine (e.g. an ARM board) on a different machine (e.g. your own PC). By using dynamic translation, it achieves very good performance. When used as a virtualizer, it achieves near native performance by executing the guest code directly on the host CPU. it supports virtualization when executing under the Xen hypervisor or using the KVM kernel module in Linux. When using KVM, it can virtualize x86, server and embedded PowerPC, 64-bit POWER, S390, 32-bit and 64-bit ARM, and MIPS guests.

PageKite

PageKite

PageKite is a system for exposing localhost servers to the public Internet. It is most commonly used to make local web servers or SSH servers publicly visible, although almost any TCP-based protocol can work if the client knows how to use an HTTP proxy.

MAMP

MAMP

It can be installed under macOS and Windows with just a few clicks. It provides them with all the tools they need to run WordPress on their desktop PC for testing or development purposes, for example. It doesn't matter if you prefer Apache or Nginx or if you want to work with PHP, Python, Perl or Ruby.

Parallels Desktop

Parallels Desktop

Parallels Desktop for Mac allows you to seamlessly run both Windows and MacOS applications side-by-side with speed, control and confidence.

warp

warp

warp lets you securely share your terminal with one simple command: warp open. When connected to your warp, clients can see your terminal exactly as if they were sitting next to you. You can also grant them write access, the equivalent of handing them your keyboard.

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