> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://ngrok.com/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# What is ngrok?

> ngrok is developer infrastructure that routes and secures traffic to your apps, APIs, and AI models, wherever they run.

ngrok is developer infrastructure that routes and secures traffic to your apps, APIs, and AI models.
It manages connectivity between all of the tools and platforms you use to put your services online, no matter where they're deployed or what network they're on.

ngrok's core products are Gateway, AI Gateway, and Share Localhost.
Gateway owns the connectivity primitives, and the other products integrate them.

## Products

<Columns cols={1}>
  <Card title="Gateway" icon="gears" href="/docs/gateway/overview" horizontal>
    An all-in-one cloud networking platform that secures, transforms, and routes traffic to your services.
    Unlike cloud provider gateways locked to their own networks, ngrok works the same in AWS, Azure, GCP, on-prem, and your customer's networks.
  </Card>

  <Card title="AI Gateway" icon="robot" href="/docs/ai-gateway/overview" horizontal>
    Route, secure, and manage traffic to any LLM—cloud or local—through one endpoint.
    Use OpenAI, Anthropic, and more without signing up for each provider.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Share Localhost" icon="laptop-code" href="/docs/share-localhost/overview" horizontal>
    Expose a service running on `localhost` to the internet, even from behind a NAT or firewall.
    Skip port forwarding, DNS changes, and firewall rules entirely.
  </Card>
</Columns>

## Why ngrok?

<Columns cols={2}>
  <Card title="Environment independence" icon="globe">
    ngrok works everywhere, and it works *the same* everywhere: AWS, GCP, Azure, your on-prem data center, a Raspberry Pi, or your laptop.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Unified ingress" icon="layer-group">
    Collapse the reverse proxy, load balancer, API gateway, WAF, and DDoS protection into one platform with unified configuration and observability.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Production-ready sooner" icon="rocket">
    Authentication, attack protection, and traffic acceleration are handled for you, so you can focus on your app instead of networking configuration.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Application-layer abstractions" icon="code">
    Stop wrestling with CIDRs, ports, and TLS certificates.
    Work with application primitives like authentication and request routing instead.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Parity between dev and production" icon="arrows-left-right">
    Run ngrok in local development exactly the way you run it in production, eliminating the bugs that come from environment drift.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Pay as you go" icon="credit-card">
    Public, predictable pricing that anyone can start with using a credit card.
    You pay only for what you use.
  </Card>
</Columns>

## What can you do with ngrok?

### Build and test

* **[Share a local app](/docs/share-localhost/overview)**: Put anything on localhost behind a stable, secure public URL.
* **[Test webhooks locally](/docs/share-localhost/webhooks)**: Inspect, replay, and verify requests while you build.
* **[Connect local MCP servers](/docs/using-ngrok-with/using-mcp)**: Let ChatGPT and Claude reach tools on your machine.

### Play

* **[Host a Minecraft server](/docs/gateway/examples/minecraft)**: Let your friends join, and block the griefers, without port forwarding.

### Deploy and run

* **[Route traffic to self-hosted models](/docs/ai-gateway/guides/use-a-model-you-run-yourself)**: Privately connect to any hardware, in any network, over an AI gateway.
* **[Run preview and CI workloads](/docs/gateway/examples/ephemeral-workloads)**: Give every ephemeral service a secure public URL.

### Deliver and connect

* **[Deliver and secure APIs](/docs/gateway/api-gateway/get-started)**: Route, authenticate, and protect requests through an API gateway.
* **[Reach customer networks](/docs/gateway/site-to-site-connectivity/overview)**: Connect to customer APIs and databases with site-to-site connectivity.
* **[Receive webhooks on-prem](/docs/gateway/webhooks-to-on-prem/overview)**: Verify signatures for 70+ providers at one webhook gateway.
* **[Connect privately across networks](/docs/gateway/endpoints/internal-endpoints)**: Reach across network boundaries without public URLs, open ports, or VPNs.
* **[Connect device fleets](/docs/gateway/device-gateway/overview)**: Reach devices in the field through a device gateway, no inbound ports.
* **[Open SSH and RDP sessions](/docs/gateway/ssh-rdp)**: Reach a shell or desktop on a remote machine without a VPN.

## Gateway primitives

Gateway owns the primitives that move traffic.
AI Gateway and Share Localhost build on them, so what you learn once applies wherever you use ngrok.

* [Endpoints](/docs/gateway/endpoints/): The URLs traffic arrives on, whether created by an agent or in the cloud.
* [Traffic Policy](/docs/gateway/traffic-policy/): Filter, match, manage, and orchestrate traffic to your endpoints.
* [Domains & TLS](/docs/gateway/domains/): Serve traffic on your own hostnames, and manage the certificates that terminate TLS.
* [Traffic observability](/docs/obs/): Capture and replay requests and responses.
* [Identity and access](/docs/iam/): Manage credentials for human users and automated processes.

## How ngrok works

Each product has its own architecture and request flow.

<Columns cols={2}>
  <Card title="Gateway" icon="gears" href="/docs/gateway/how-it-works" horizontal>
    How ngrok's global cloud service and agent software deliver traffic to your upstream services.
  </Card>

  <Card title="AI Gateway" icon="robot" href="/docs/ai-gateway/how-it-works" horizontal>
    How ngrok.ai routes requests, validates access keys, and handles failover across model providers.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Share Localhost" icon="laptop-code" href="/docs/share-localhost/tunnels" horizontal>
    How the ngrok agent creates encrypted tunnels that deliver internet traffic to your local machine.
  </Card>
</Columns>

## What's next?

* Start with the product that fits your use case: [Gateway](/docs/gateway/overview), [AI Gateway](/docs/ai-gateway/overview), or [Share Localhost](/docs/share-localhost/overview).
* Browse the [Gateway examples collection](/docs/gateway/examples/) to see common patterns implemented end to end.
* Check the [FAQ](/docs/faq) for common questions, or the [glossary](/docs/glossary) for ngrok terminology.