What is expose?

Expose is an open-source tunneling tool written in PHP. A tunnel service solves a specific developer problem: when you are building a website or application on your own computer, that local server is only reachable by your own machine. Expose creates a publicly accessible URL that forwards traffic from the internet to your local machine. This is useful when you need to share a work-in-progress with a client, test a payment webhook that needs to call back to your server, or let a third-party service reach something running on your laptop. The README describes it as an open-source alternative to ngrok, which is a widely used commercial tool that does the same job. The difference is that the Expose code is fully open, which means you can run the server software yourself on your own infrastructure rather than depending on a third-party service. This matters if you want full control over where your traffic passes or if you need to run it inside a private network. A managed hosted version is available at expose.dev with a free test server based in the EU, for people who want to use the service without hosting anything. A paid tier called Expose Pro adds access to a global server network, support for custom domains, and higher-speed connections. The README itself is brief and points to the official documentation site at expose.dev/docs for full installation and deployment instructions. The project is released under the MIT License, which permits free use in personal and commercial projects.