ngrok Free Trial: What You Get, What You Don't, and a Free Alternative With No Timer

ngrok is one of the landmark developer tools of the last decade. If you've ever needed to expose a localhost server to the internet — to test a Stripe webhook, to receive a Twilio callback, to debug a Shopify integration — there's a good chance ngrok was the first tool you reached for. The ngrok http 3000 command and the resulting public HTTPS URL have saved an incalculable number of hours that would otherwise have gone to staging server deploys. The ngrok documentation covers the full feature set.

That reputation is earned. This post isn't an argument against using ngrok. It's an honest evaluation of what the free tier includes, where the paid plans begin, and why any developer considering a serious investment in the platform should understand both the billing model and the intellectual cost of learning any new tool's mental model before committing to it.

What ngrok's Free Tier Actually Includes

ngrok's free tier is a real working product, not a crippled demo. You get:

A working tunnel. One active tunnel session that exposes your local server to the internet over HTTPS. ngrok handles TLS termination at its edge — your local server can be plain HTTP and the public URL will be HTTPS with a valid certificate. This works reliably and requires no configuration beyond running the agent.

Traffic Inspector. The local dashboard at http://localhost:4040 shows every request that passed through the tunnel in real time — full headers, full request and response body, timing, HTTP status. You can replay any captured request directly against your running handler. For interactive local debugging this feature is excellent.

Assigned static subdomain. Free accounts receive a stable subdomain that persists across tunnel restarts. Earlier versions of ngrok assigned a random subdomain on each session, which required reconfiguring webhook providers every time you started a new tunnel. The stable subdomain resolved that friction for most users — but compare our full ngrok webhook testing vs HookTunnel breakdown before committing.

Basic ingress. HTTP and HTTPS tunnel for one agent connection at a time. No team access, no concurrent tunnel connections.

The free tier is a capable development tool within its scope. The limitations don't manifest until your use case pushes beyond solo local development.

What Changes on Paid Plans

ngrok's paid plans are organized around the capabilities that professional and team use cases require. The meaningful additions include:

Custom domains and branded subdomains. Free accounts use ngrok's assigned subdomain. Paid plans allow you to configure your own domain — webhooks.yourdomain.com — as the public endpoint for your tunnel. This matters when you need provider-configured URLs to look like your own infrastructure or when you're demonstrating integrations to customers.

Traffic policies. ngrok's paid tiers expose a traffic policy system built on a YAML configuration format. Traffic policies let you add authentication, rate limiting, header manipulation, IP restrictions, and custom response logic to your tunnel without touching your application code. It's a meaningful capability for teams running ngrok in anything resembling production.

Team and organization features. Multiple team members, shared tunnels, audit logging, and SSO via OAuth or SAML are paid-only capabilities. ngrok's free tier is single-user.

Higher connection limits and concurrent sessions. Free tier limits you to one active agent connection. Paid plans support multiple concurrent tunnels.

Dedicated support. Free tier support is community-based. Paid plans add email or priority support depending on tier.

The Billing Pattern Worth Knowing

Before upgrading, verify the billing cadence explicitly. Multiple G2 reviews for ngrok — as recently as late 2025 — describe confusion around annual billing appearing when users expected monthly charges. This isn't unique to ngrok; many SaaS products default to annual billing at checkout because it improves their metrics, and the option to switch to monthly can require navigating a secondary confirmation.

The pattern shows up in enough independent reviews to be worth a direct check: before you click the upgrade button, confirm whether you're agreeing to a monthly charge or an annual commitment. The per-month cost displayed on ngrok's pricing page is sometimes the annualized monthly rate, with the monthly billing option at a higher rate. Verify the number in your invoice before it posts.

This is not a reason to avoid ngrok. It's a reason to read the checkout screen carefully. For more on this pattern, see our post on ngrok billing and support patterns.

The Hidden Cost of Free Trials: Intellectual Investment

Here's the cost that doesn't appear on any pricing page: learning a new tool's mental model takes time, and that time has a compounding cost.

ngrok's conceptual surface area has grown substantially as the product has matured. Traffic policies are written in YAML and reference a specific policy language with its own operators and expressions. Agent configuration has its own format and option set. Endpoint policies, cloud edges, traffic inspector filtering, and agent library integrations each have their own documentation sections.

For developers who use ngrok for the simple case — ngrok http 3000, capture some payloads, quit — none of this matters. But developers who explore paid features typically do so because they want to use the more sophisticated capabilities. Traffic policies for authentication. Custom domains for branded URLs. Agent SDKs for programmatic control. Each of these requires reading, experimenting, and building a mental model of how ngrok structures its abstractions.

The hidden cost is this: once you spend two to four hours setting up ngrok's traffic policies, configuring your agent, and learning how endpoints relate to edges and how edges relate to policies, you're psychologically invested. Switching tools after that investment feels expensive — not because the migration is technically hard, but because you've already spent the time. The sunk cost of the learning curve makes staying feel rational even when a simpler tool would serve the use case.

The antidote is to start with the simplest possible tool that solves the core problem and validate before going deeper. If you need a permanent URL that captures incoming webhooks — nothing more — ngrok's full policy engine is overhead you may not need to learn. Use our webhook vendor evaluation checklist to structure that decision before you invest in the platform.

How HookTunnel Compares

ngrok and HookTunnel address different parts of the webhook problem, and it's worth being direct about that.

ngrok is built for local development — exposing a running server to the internet so you can test integrations against live providers in real time. Its core strength is the live tunnel with Traffic Inspector, and that strength is real.

HookTunnel is built for the persistent capture use case — a stable URL you configure with a provider once and that captures every webhook that provider sends, indefinitely, whether or not you're at your desk. There's no tunnel session to keep running. The URL is permanent and doesn't change between sessions, restarts, or any other event. See all HookTunnel features for the full scope.

The free tier is permanently free: one webhook URL, no credit card, no account required, no time limit. You configure the URL in Stripe or Twilio or GitHub, and every request they send is captured and stored for 24 hours. There are no traffic policies to learn, no agent configuration files to write, no YAML. Just a URL.

Pro is $19 per month flat — no throughput billing, no per-seat charges, no credit model. You get 30 days of request history and one-click replay to any endpoint. That's the full feature set.

For local development — running a handler, testing a specific flow, watching responses in real time — ngrok's Traffic Inspector is the better tool. For the URL you configure in your provider's dashboard and expect to be stable indefinitely with persistent request history, HookTunnel is the simpler fit.

What to Know Before You Sign Up

ngrok is excellent for what it does. The free tier is genuinely capable for solo local webhook development. The paid tiers unlock meaningful capabilities for teams and for production-adjacent use cases.

Before you upgrade, know which capabilities you actually need. If you need custom domains and traffic policies, ngrok's paid plans deliver those. If you need a stable webhook URL with persistent history and occasional manual replay, you may not need the full platform.

And before you invest two hours learning traffic policy YAML, ask whether the simpler tool — a URL that captures payloads and holds them until you're ready to look — is sufficient for your current problem. Start simple, validate the use case, and upgrade deliberately when you know what you actually need.

Generate a free permanent webhook URL → No account. No credit card. No tunnel to run.