🐐 Introducing NetGoat: A Self-Hostable Reverse Proxy That Goes Beast Mode
TL;DR: NetGoat is a next-gen, high-performance reverse proxy engine that acts like a Cloudflare Zero Trust layer — but runs on your homelab or cloud for free, with full customization, real-time metrics, and god-mode traffic control.
🧠 What is NetGoat?
NetGoat is an open-source reverse proxy designed for homelabbers, indie devs, and sysadmins who want Cloudflare-level protection and features, without the limitations or price tag.
Whether you’re running a portfolio site, self-hosted services, or full-on production infra — NetGoat gives you:
- 🔥 High performance powered by Bun
- 🛡️ Smart Anti-DDoS, WAF rules, and bot filtering
- 📊 Real-time traffic dashboards
- 🔒 Auto SSL/TLS termination
- 🔁 Load balancing and failover logic
- 🧠 Plugin-based architecture for custom logic
... and yeah, it even supports WebSockets, HTTP/2, and Cloudflare Zero Trust mode.
🧪 Why I built this
I was tired of reverse proxies being either:
- 🧊 Too barebones (Nginx, Caddy),
- 🔒 Too limited (Cloudflare Free Tier),
- 💸 Too expensive (Enterprise tools), So I made NetGoat — a powerful layer that can run with or without Cloudflare, giving you full flexibility, freedom, and no vendor lock-in.
It’s built with:
- 🧪 Bun for insane speed
- ⚡ Fastify for scalable routing
- 💻 Next.js and TailwindCSS for the optional UI
🚀 Key Features
- 🛡️ WAF & DDoS Filtering
- ⚙️ Rate Limiting & Queuing
- 🔐 Free SSL with Auto-Renew
- 📦 Smart Caching Rules
- 🌐 Multi-domain support
- 🧩 Plugin system for custom logic
- 💾 Runs on any VPS or homelab box
👀 Demo / Screenshots
Coming soon! UI preview and demo server in the next update.
🐳 Quick Start
git clone https://github.com/cloudable-dev/netgoat
cd netgoat
bun install
bun run start
- ⚠️ Make sure ports 80/443 are open
- 🌐 Point your domain to your VPS IP
- 🔥 Watch traffic flow and flex
📦 Tech Stack
📣 Call to Action
If this project sounds interesting, I’d love your feedback. Star it, fork it, break it, and PR it:
👉 GitHub Repo: github.com/cloudable-dev/netgoat
💬 Let’s talk
Got a feature idea?
Hit me up here or on GitHub - let’s build this wild tool together.
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