# BitBang 10 Hacker News commenters recommended BitBang and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months. **Verdict:** Recommended as a minimal open source alternative to Cloudflare Tunnel or Tailscale, with no account or port forwarding. Critics say it is unfinished and still needs a central server. ## Why people recommend it - Open source alternative to Tailscale or Cloudflare (2 comments): "Its really clever and minimal approach to getting (for my use case at least) the moral equivalent of a cloudflare tunnel" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49125939)) "an open source alternative to Tailscale, to be more precise, and an excellent one at that!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49127996)) - Promising idea people want to try (3 comments): "This idea has so much promise, I hope this is the project that makes it take off." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49126821)) "I've been using it and it certainly has the potential." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49514240)) "Looking forward to trying bitbang! Seems super neat" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49130133)) ## What people warn about - Seems unfinished, not yet usable (1 comments): "product seems to be unfinished or at least still not usable considering the problem it is solving" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49133043)) - Claims P2P but relies on central server (1 comments): "It claims to be P2P, but it still needs to bootstrap the connection via central server." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49126511)) - Works as phonebook, not keyring (1 comments): "it's a phonebook rather than a keyring" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49126601)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Cloudflare Quick Tunnels](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cloudflare-quick-tunnels.md): 29 recommend - [ngrok](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ngrok.md): 19 recommend - [Tunnl.gg](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tunnl-gg.md): 12 recommend - [Pinggy](https://hackerapproved.com/p/pinggy.md): 6 recommend - [sish](https://hackerapproved.com/p/sish.md): 6 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "BitBang", https://hackerapproved.com/p/bitbang/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).