cgrok

cgrok — Cloudflare Tunnel CLI

cgrok creates secure tunnels from the internet to your local development server using Cloudflare. It works like ngrok but uses your own Cloudflare account and domain.

Installation

# npm (requires Node.js)
npm install -g @circlesac/cgrok

# Homebrew
brew install circlesac/tap/cgrok

# Direct download
curl -fsSL https://github.com/circlesac/cgrok/releases/latest/download/install.sh | sh

Prerequisites

You need a Cloudflare account with:

1. An API token (create at https://dash.cloudflare.com/profile/api-tokens)
2. At least one zone (domain) configured in Cloudflare

The API token needs permissions for:

• Zone DNS Edit
• Account Cloudflare Tunnel Edit
• Zone Zone Read
• Account Account Settings Read

Setup

Configure cgrok with your Cloudflare API token:

cgrok config add-authtoken <your-cloudflare-api-token>

This validates the token, lets you select an account and zone (if you have multiple), and saves the configuration to ~/.config/cgrok/cgrok.json. The selected zone becomes the default domain for all tunnels.

Creating Tunnels

Basic usage (ephemeral subdomain)

# Tunnel to a local port
cgrok http 3000

# Tunnel to a specific address:port
cgrok http localhost:8080

This generates a random 12-character subdomain under the default zone you selected during setup (e.g., a1b2c3d4e5f6.crcl.es). To change the default zone, re-run cgrok config add-authtoken.

Custom subdomain

# Use a specific subdomain (appended to default zone, e.g., myapp.crcl.es)
cgrok http 3000 --url myapp

# Use a full domain (must match one of your Cloudflare zones)
cgrok http 3000 --url myapp.example.com

Force overwrite existing DNS

cgrok http 3000 --url myapp --force

Debug mode

cgrok http 3000 --debug

How It Works

When you run cgrok http <port>:

1. Loads config from ~/.config/cgrok/cgrok.json
2. Resolves the domain (ephemeral random name or your --url value)
3. Checks for an existing Cloudflare tunnel with that name
4. Creates a new tunnel if none exists
5. Creates a CNAME DNS record pointing to the tunnel
6. Starts cloudflared locally to serve the tunnel
7. Displays an ngrok-style dashboard with connection status and log stream

On Ctrl+C, cgrok cleans up by removing the DNS record and deleting the tunnel.

Requirements

• cloudflared must be installed and available in PATH
  • macOS: brew install cloudflare/cloudflare/cloudflared
  • Linux: see https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one/connections/connect-networks/downloads/

Troubleshooting

• "Configuration file not found": Run cgrok config add-authtoken <token> first
• "Domain already exists in DNS": Use --force to overwrite, or choose a different --url
• "Could not get the tunnel secret": Delete the stale tunnel with cloudflared tunnel delete <id> and retry
• cloudflared not found: Install cloudflared (see Requirements above)