Pangolin Self-Hosted Reverse Proxy Service
| Basic Information | |
|---|---|
| Release Year | |
| Product Type | |
| In Production | Yes |
| Official Website | https://pangolin.net/ |
Consumer-impact summary
Pangolin is a self-hosted open-source reverse proxy and identity-aware tunneling platform positioned as an alternative to Cloudflare Tunnels.
While the core system remains open source, recent development has introduced a structured separation between Community Edition and Enterprise/Cloud editions. Over successive releases, major platform features have increasingly been introduced with explicit or implicit restrictions that place advanced functionality outside the Community Edition.
This results in a functional divergence between the self-hosted GPL version and paid tiers, where Community Edition remains focused on baseline tunneling while newer platform capabilities are delivered in Enterprise/Cloud.
Release-by-release CE vs Enterprise feature exclusion audit
| Release | Feature introduced | Community Edition (GPL self-hosted) | Enterprise / Cloud Edition | Source
1.13.0 - 1.13.0 - 1.17.0 - 1.17.0 - 1.18.0 - 1.18.0 - 1.18.0 - 1.18.0 - 1.18.0 - 1.19.0 - 1.19.0 - 1.19.0 - 1.19.0 } Timeline of product positioning shiftInitial positioning (1.0.0 era)Pangolin was introduced as a self-hosted alternative to Cloudflare Tunnels, designed for full user-controlled deployment of identity-aware reverse proxy infrastructure. Source: https://github.com/fosrl/pangolin/releases/tag/1.0.0 Feature expansion phase (1.13.0)Private resource controls and device-based identity models expanded the system beyond simple tunneling into a broader access-control platform. Source: https://github.com/fosrl/pangolin/releases/tag/1.13.0 RBAC and identity segmentation (1.17.0)Advanced RBAC features including multi-role support were introduced, forming the basis for later tier separation between Community and Enterprise editions. Source: https://github.com/fosrl/pangolin/releases/tag/1.17.0 Infrastructure platform expansion (1.18.0)Multi-site routing, wildcard resources, monitoring, and audit features were introduced, significantly expanding the system into infrastructure orchestration territory. Source: https://github.com/fosrl/pangolin/releases/tag/1.18.0 Enterprise-gated remote access layer (1.19.0)Browser-based SSH, RDP, and VNC access were introduced and documented as Cloud/Enterprise-only features, excluding them from the Community Edition. Source: https://github.com/fosrl/pangolin/releases/tag/1.19.0 Docs: https://docs.pangolin.net/manage/ssh Consumer impactThe Community Edition remains functional as a self-hosted tunneling system, but successive releases introduce major platform capabilities outside the GPL self-hosted version. This produces a consistent structural pattern: Community Edition retains core tunneling functionality Advanced identity, infrastructure, and remote access features are moved to Enterprise/Cloud tiers Feature parity between self-hosted and hosted versions decreases over time See alsoOpen-core software model Self-hosted infrastructure platforms WireGuard Cloudflare Tunnels Twingate |
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