Make Your Local Service Public over Internet with FRP

This is a NO-BS guide on how to make any of your locally running services publicly available on internet. Let's get straight at it.

Often you just want to expose a local service like: - localhost:3000 // running some website - localhost:3001 // running some service to the public internet so friends or other devs can access it.

Normally this means:

• Docker
• Reverse proxie setup (caddy,nginx etc)
• VPS setup (install deps, configure etc)

FRP (Fast Reverse Proxy) removes all that. Repo: github

Why FRP ?

• No docker
• No docker-compose setup
• No reverse Proxy setup (caddy, nginx)

Setup in Two steps:

• Run frps on your vps (vps has a public ip)
• Run frpc on client, your local machine

That's it! your local server becomes available at: http://[your-vps-ip]:[remotePort]

Here's a quick step-by-step guide to do it.

Let's assume: There is some web-app/service running on: localhost:3000 & localhost:3001

1. Install frp on both vps & your local machine: https://github.com/fatedier/frp/releases/tag/v0.66.0
   • you can choose the latest release
   • enter this in your terminal:

wget https://github.com/fatedier/frp/releases/download/v0.66.0/frp_0.66.0_linux_amd64.tar.gz
tar -xzf frp_0.66.0_linux_amd64.tar.gz
cd frp_0.66.0_linux_amd64

2. You'll see these files in the directory:

   • frpc
   • frpc.toml
   • frps
   • frps.toml
   • LICENSE

3. On your vps:

   • [Optinal]

     • check if firewall is enabled: sudo ufw status
     • if ufw is enabled allow required ports: sudo ufw allow 7000 sudo ufw allow 8081 sudo ufw allow 8082
     • If UFW is not enabled, you can skip this step.

   • (Note: 7000 is the FRP control port; 8081 / 8082 are the public ports exposed by FRP.)

   • edit the frps config, for example:

   bindPort = 7000
   auth.token="meow"
   

   • auth.token is a secret string that your local-machine & vps share for auth.
   • bindPort is the port with which the client (frpc) will communicate
   • start the frps by entering this cmd in terminal:
     • ./frps -c frps.toml

4. On local machine:

   • start any service, let's say a website is running on port: 3000
   • edit the frpc.toml config file:

     serverAddr = "<your-vps-ip>"
     serverPort = 7000
     auth.token="meow"
     
     [[proxies]]
     name = "web-app-1"
     type = "tcp"
     localIP = "127.0.0.1"
     localPort = 3000
     remotePort = 8081
     
     [[proxies]]
     name = "web-app-2"
     type = "tcp"
     localIP = "127.0.0.1"
     localPort = 3001
     remotePort = 8082
     
   • start the frp client on you local machine
     • ./frpc -c frpc.toml

!! Security notes (important)

• These ports are public
• Anyone can access them
• Use strong tokens
• Do not expose sensitive services without proper security

Yup -- That's it, your services are online & publicly accessible, you can check them here: http://[your-vps-ip]:[remotePort]

FRP supports many more features like custom domains, TLS, encryption, security,load balancing, and much more.

This guide only covers a basic quickstart — be sure to read the official FRP README for advanced setups.