Testing webhooks locally without public URL

Question

Need to test webhook payloads on localhost. Currently using ngrok but connection drops after 2 hours on free tier. Looking for alternatives that don't require public deployment.

Specifically: 
 
 Need stable tunnel for multi-day testing 
 Must inspect raw POST body for signature verification 
 Running Node.js handler locally

What are people using? Cloudflare Tunnel? LocalStack? Something else?

Eli Torres (Staff) · Accepted Answer

Yeah this one tripped me up too when I first looked at it — the free ngrok timeout is brutal for webhook testing.

What I do now: Cloudflare Tunnel for the stable endpoint, plus ngrok only when I need to inspect traffic in their nice web UI. Best of both worlds.

For raw body inspection (critical for signature verification), here's a minimal Express middleware I use:

const rawBodyMiddleware = (req, res, next) => {
 let raw = '';
 req.on('data', chunk => raw += chunk);
 req.on('end', () => {
 req.rawBody = raw;
 next();
 });
};

Then verify the signature with req.rawBody before JSON parsing mangles whitespace.

Pro tip: if you're testing the actual retry behavior, use the Test Webhook button in Settings > Integrations > Webhooks — it sends a real payload with a test event type. Way better than curl-ing fake JSON and wondering why signature verification fails.

More context in Setting Up Webhooks and Webhook Not Firing on Job Completion if you hit delivery issues.

Leo Nakamura · Answer

Options: 
 
 Cloudflare Tunnel — persistent, free, no time limits. cloudflared tunnel --url http://localhost:3000 
 ngrok paid — if you need custom domains and stable URLs 
 webhook.site — for quick inspection without local handler 
 localtunnel — npm install, less reliable than ngrok

For signature verification, use ngrok or cloudflared with a local proxy that logs raw body before your handler processes it.

Docs: Setting Up Webhooks