NetGoat: The Open-source Free Self-hosted Cloudflare Alternative
What is NetGoat?
NetGoat is a self-hosted reverse proxy engine. Think of it as a traffic cop and a digital shield that sits right in front of your web servers, applications, or homelab services. Currently in active alpha development, NetGoat aims to bridge the gap between complex self-hosted setups and user-friendly traffic control.
How does it work?
It takes on the heavy lifting of managing incoming internet traffic. Instead of exposing your apps directly to the wild internet, NetGoat handles security (DDoS defense, rate limiting, Zero Trust access), automatically manages your SSL certificates (so your sites are secure), and funnels users to the right place.
Why do we actually need an open-source, self-hosted Cloudflare alternative?
Cloudflare is great, but relying on a single, massive corporate gatekeeper to protect half the internet comes with massive downsides.
When you use a proprietary cloud provider, you don't actually own your infrastructure, you are renting their goodwill. If they decide to change their free tier, update their privacy policies, or flag your account by mistake, your services go down. Furthermore, passing all your user data through a third party's servers introduces major privacy issues.
A self-hosted alternative like NetGoat gives you absolute sovereignty. You get the essential features, Zero Trust networking, traffic control, and security, without the enterprise price tag, without the telemetry, and without giving a tech giant complete visibility into your network traffic. If you run a homelab, a small business, or value digital independence, keeping that control local is a no-brainer.
Featires
- Anti-DDoS & WAF: Filters like a hawk. Blocks malicious requests, bots, and common exploits.
- Rate Limiting & Request Queuing: Your API won’t get nuked.
- Auto SSL & TLS Termination: Free SSL with auto-renew.
- Load Balancing & Failover: Multinode routing with zero-downtime.
- Real-Time Metrics Dashboard: Monitor traffic, bandwidth, errors, and hits.
- Dynamic Rules Engine: Write custom rules in JS/TS to handle routing, caching, filtering, etc.
- WebSocket & HTTP/2 Ready: Handles modern protocols like a beast.
- Per-Domain Configs: Define behavior per site with regex/wildcard support.
- Plugin System: Extend NetGoat with custom plugins or middlewares.
- Cloudflare Zero Trust Support: Acts as a trusted upstream in Zero Trust setups.
- Smart Caching Layer: Custom cache policies per route, endpoint, or asset.
Why Healthcare Infrastructure Needs Self-Hosted Traffic Management
1- Absolute Data Privacy and HIPAA/KVKK Compliance:
In healthcare, patient data isn't just data, it's legally protected, highly sensitive information. Routing clinical traffic through third-party cloud gatekeepers introduces unnecessary compliance risks and data-sharing vulnerabilities. NetGoat allows hospitals and clinics to keep all internal routing, patient portal traffic, and medical records strictly within their own secure infrastructure, maintaining total custody over data privacy.
2- Bulletproof Internal Security via Zero Trust:
Medical networks are primary targets for ransomware and data breaches. NetGoat’s Zero Trust architecture ensures that digital medical equipment, electronic health records (EHR) systems, and staff portals are never exposed directly to the open internet. Doctors and nurses can securely access critical clinical systems remotely, while malicious actors are blocked at the perimeter before they can ever scan for open network ports.
4- High-Performance Routing for Critical Care:
When sync speed matters, such as streaming telemetry, real-time vital monitoring, or updating digital charts—latency can impact patient care. Built on a high-performance stack using Bun and Fastify, NetGoat handles heavy traffic spikes, WebSocket connections for real-time updates, and SSL encryption instantly, ensuring that clinical applications remain responsive under pressure without requiring a massive IT budget.
5- Uninterrupted Local Continuity:
Relying on an external cloud provider means your internal hospital dashboards or clinic portals could go down if the provider suffers an outage or changes its enterprise pricing model. Running a self-hosted engine like NetGoat guarantees that your traffic management layer is completely under your control, ensuring continuous operational uptime for healthcare staff who rely on these systems 24/7.
License
AGPL-3.0
