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When building APIs, you often need to share your work with teammates or partners before deploying. ngrok lets you expose your local API server with a public HTTPS URL so others can interact with it right away.

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How it works

  1. Install ngrok
  2. Start your API server locally
  3. Run ngrok http <port> to create a public endpoint
  4. Share the ngrok URL with anyone who needs to test your API

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Quick example

ngrok http 8080
Share the HTTPS forwarding URL with your team. They can make requests to your local API as if it were deployed.

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Collaboration benefits

  • Instant sharing: Share a working API with teammates without pushing to a staging environment.
  • Real-time iteration: Make changes locally and have them immediately reflected for anyone using the URL.
  • Frontend-backend collaboration: Frontend developers can point their app at your local API while you iterate on it.
  • External testing: Share your API with partners or clients for early integration testing.

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Inspect API traffic

Use ngrok’s Traffic Inspector to monitor all API requests and responses in real time. This is especially helpful for debugging integration issues when working with external consumers.

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Add authentication

Protect your shared API by adding authentication with a Traffic Policy. You can require OAuth or other forms of authentication without changing your application code. See the authentication guide for setup instructions.

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Next steps