How to Run Multiple Cloudflare Tunnels on a Single Server

Paul Ng — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 13:40:32 +0000

Cloudflare (CF) Tunnel is a powerful way to expose your local services to the internet without opening ports or configuring firewalls. But what if you need to run multiple tunnels on the same server?

This guide covers two approaches and shows you how to manage them with systemd.

Approach #1: Single tunnel with Multiple Services

If all services belong to the same CF Account, use one tunnel with multiple ingress rules:

# /etc/cloudflared/config.yml
  tunnel: my-tunnel-id
  credentials-file: /etc/cloudflared/my-tunnel-id.json

  ingress:
    - hostname: app1.example.com
      service: http://localhost:3000
    - hostname: app2.example.com
      service: http://localhost:8080
    - hostname: api.example.com
      service: http://localhost:5000
    - service: http_status:404

The catch-all rule at the end is required.

Run it:

sudo cloudflared service install
sudo systemctl start cloudflared

This approach will take less resource and easier to for monitoring and management. However, we need all services share the same account.

So when you need separate tunnels, approach #2 will help with it.

Approach #2: Multiple Tunnel Instances

First, check your existing tunnel:

ps aux | grep cloudflared | grep -v grep

or checking systemd service

sudo systemctl status cloudflared

Next, create additional service files

By default, it will creates the file /etc/systemd/system/cloudflared.service. For additional tunnels, create new service files manually.

sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/cloudflared-tunnel2.service
[Unit]
Description=Cloudflare Tunnel 2
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=notify
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/cloudflared --no-autoupdate tunnel run --token YOUR_TUNNEL_TOKEN_HERE
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5
TimeoutStartSec=0

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Replace YOUR_TUNNEL_TOKEN_HERE with your actual tunnel token from Cloudflare Zero Trust dashboard.

Then, enable and start the new service

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable cloudflared-tunnel2
sudo systemctl start cloudflared-tunnel2

Finally verify both tunnels are running

sudo systemctl status cloudflared
sudo systemctl status cloudflared-tunnel2

Tips: instead of inline tokens, we can use config files for each tunnel:

sudo mkdir -p /etc/cloudflared/tunnel2

Create /etc/cloudflared/tunnel2/config.yml:

tunnel: your-tunnel-id
credentials-file: /etc/cloudflared/tunnel2/credentials.json

ingress:
- hostname: service.example.com
  service: http://localhost:4000
- service: http_status:404

Update the service file:

ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/cloudflared --no-autoupdate tunnel --config /etc/cloudflared/tunnel2/config.yml run

Vibe coding is great! But we don't need to build anything from scratch.

Paul Ng — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 13:05:13 +0000

Vibe coding with Claude is addictive. You describe what you want, Claude writes it, you iterate. It feels productive. But here's what I learned the hard way: You're often reinventing wheels that have thousands of GitHub stars.

That's why I have build a "Don't Reinvent the Wheel" skill, namely programming-advisor. It triggers whenever I say things like: "I want to build a...", "Help me create...", "Can you code...".

Before Claude writes a single line of code, it searches for existing solutions and show me a comparison table.

For example, when I ask "I want to build a Hacker News CLI to browse top stories from terminal". It will reply by following

  ## 🔍 Existing Solutions Found

  ### NPM Packages
  - hackernews-cli: Browse HN from terminal | 200+ stars
  - haxor-news: Full featured HN CLI in Python | 3.8K stars
  - hn-cli: Minimal HN reader | 150+ stars

  ### Open Source Tools
  - circumflex: Beautiful HN terminal client | 1K+ stars
  - clx: TUI for Hacker News | 400+ stars

  ## 📊 Build vs Buy Comparison

  | Option | Type | Cost | Setup | Maintenance | Est. Tokens |
  |--------|------|------|-------|-------------|-------------|
  | circumflex | CLI tool | Free | 1 min | None | 0 |
  | haxor-news | CLI tool | Free | 2 min | None | 0 |
  | Custom CLI | Build | Free | 2-4 hrs | You own it | ~40-80K |

  ## 💡 Recommendation

  Install circumflex or haxor-news. Both are mature, well-maintained,
  and have features you'll forget to implement:

  - Collapsible comments
  - Vim keybindings
  - Color themes
  - Story filtering
  - Offline caching

I installed circumflex in 10 seconds. It does everything I wanted plus features I didn't know I needed.
Tokens saved: ~50K. Time saved: 3 hours.

Wanna try it?

Install the skill:

# Add the marketplace
/plugin marketplace add gaupoit/programming-advisor

# Install the plugin
/plugin install programming-advisor

Or try the demo project:

git clone https://github.com/gaupoit/dont-reinvent-the-wheel-demo.git
cd dont-reinvent-the-wheel-demo
claude

Happy Coding/Vibing

Forem: Paul Ng

How to Run Multiple Cloudflare Tunnels on a Single Server

Approach #1: Single tunnel with Multiple Services

Approach #2: Multiple Tunnel Instances

Vibe coding is great! But we don't need to build anything from scratch.