Pangolin emerged from the frustration of configuring traditional VPN solutions and reverse proxies separately, each with their own authentication, routing rules, and maintenance overhead. Built by brothers Owen and Milo Schwartz, who previously served as founding engineers at a smart mobility startup, Pangolin combines these capabilities into a single deployable stack. The platform uses lightweight software connectors called sites that create secure WireGuard tunnels from remote networks back to a central hub, even through restrictive firewalls and NAT configurations. Administrators define specific resources users can access rather than granting blanket network access, implementing true zero-trust principles where every request is evaluated against policy rules.
The architecture supports two primary access modes. Browser-based reverse proxy access lets users reach web applications through identity-aware tunneled proxies with automatic SSL certificate management, no client software required. Client-based access extends this to any TCP/UDP service including SSH servers, databases, RDP sessions, and entire network ranges through native Pangolin clients on Windows, macOS, and Linux. A recent major update added DNS-over-tunnel support, routing all resolution through the secure tunnel. SSO/OIDC integration enables enterprise authentication, and the dashboard UI provides centralized management for users, resources, and access policies across all connected sites.
Pangolin is developed by Fossorial, a Y Combinator X25 company, and has achieved rapid community adoption with over 19,000 GitHub stars, 140,000+ installs, and 2,700+ Discord members within five months of launch. It is available on the DigitalOcean Marketplace for one-click deployment, supports Docker Compose installation, and offers three deployment modes: fully self-hosted under AGPL-3.0, hybrid with cloud-managed failover, or fully managed cloud. The enterprise edition adds high availability, advanced analytics, and priority support under a commercial license free for businesses earning under $100K USD annually.