Jetty vs Cloudflare Tunnel
Cloudflare Tunnel (cloudflared) is excellent at what it is for: putting a production origin behind Cloudflare without opening ports. Using it to share dev work means adopting Cloudflare DNS, the Zero Trust dashboard, and per-hostname configuration.
The short version
Exposing a production service you already run behind Cloudflare? Use Cloudflare Tunnel — it is free and battle-tested. Showing work-in-progress to a client this afternoon? That is a different job, and the one Jetty is shaped for.
Side by side
| Jetty | Cloudflare Tunnel | |
|---|---|---|
| Share several servers as one page | Yes — public gallery page | No |
| Requires your domain on their DNS | No — random or reserved subdomains out of the box | Yes, for named tunnels |
| Instant ephemeral URL | Yes — `jetty share 3000` | Quick Tunnels exist, unnamed and undashboarded |
| Request inspection + replay | Captain and up | No local-dev inspector |
| Crew collaboration | Crews, roles, shared tunnels, one bill | Via Cloudflare account roles |
| Price | Free tier; $7/$19 per crew | Free |
| Production origin exposure | Not the target job | The target job — with Zero Trust |
Comparisons reflect publicly documented behavior as of August 2026. Spot something out of date? Tell us: support@usejetty.online.
Where Cloudflare Tunnel wins
- Price: free, including custom hostnames, if your DNS is on Cloudflare.
- Production posture — DDoS protection, WAF, Zero Trust access policies in front of the tunnel.
- If your infrastructure is already Cloudflare-shaped, it is one less vendor.
Where Jetty wins
- Zero setup ceremony: no DNS migration, no Zero Trust dashboard — one CLI command to a shareable URL.
- The gallery page for showing several services at once.
- A dashboard that treats dev tunnels as the product: live status, traffic inspection, replay.
- Crew-scoped sharing without granting anyone access to your Cloudflare account.
Common questions
- Is Jetty a CDN or WAF?
- No. Jetty terminates TLS and routes to your machine with per-tunnel IP allowlists and rate limits — it does not try to be Cloudflare's security stack.
See it instead of reading about it
The live demo gallery is the whole pitch. Dinghy is free — no card, no clock.