A Convoy Alternative for Delivering Webhooks Into Private Infrastructure
Compare Convoy (getconvoy.io) and Webhook Relay. Convoy is an open-source, self-hostable webhook gateway; Webhook Relay is a hosted service that receives webhooks and forwards them to public, localhost and private destinations via the relay agent, with tunnels, transformations and cron, from $9.99/month.
Convoy (getconvoy.io) is an open-source, self-hostable webhook gateway, built in Go and backed by Y Combinator. It handles both inbound and outbound webhooks, with features like retries, rate limiting, static outbound IPs and circuit breaking. If you're evaluating it against Webhook Relay, the key difference is the operating model: Convoy is software you run and maintain yourself, while Webhook Relay is a hosted service that can also deliver webhooks into private infrastructure that has no public IP.
TL;DR
- Want a self-hosted open-source gateway and willing to run and maintain it yourself? Convoy is built for that and is a solid choice.
- Want a fully managed, hosted webhook service with no infrastructure to operate? That's Webhook Relay.
- Need delivery to localhost, an internal service or a Kubernetes pod? Webhook Relay's relay agent does this natively; Convoy delivers to HTTP endpoints.
- Want tunnels, scheduled/cron webhooks and a free request bin too? Webhook Relay includes all three.
Convoy vs Webhook Relay
| Convoy | Webhook Relay | |
|---|---|---|
| Operating model | Self-hosted open source | Hosted service |
| License / source | Open source (MPL 2.0, as of 2026) | Hosted (closed) |
| Inbound + outbound webhooks | Yes | Yes |
| Retries, rate limiting, circuit breaking | Yes | Retries + ordered delivery |
| Static outgoing IP | Yes (outbound proxy) | Yes |
| Deliver to public endpoints | Yes | Yes |
| Deliver to localhost / private network | No (HTTP endpoints) | Yes (relay agent) |
| General-purpose tunnels | No | Yes |
| Scheduled / cron webhooks | No | Yes |
| Transformations | Yes | JS / Lua + AI |
| Kubernetes operator | Run it yourself | Yes |
| Consumer-facing free request bin | No | Webhook Bin |
| Hosting / ops burden | You run and maintain it | Fully managed |
| Starting paid price (managed) | Self-host / cloud (verify status) | $9.99/mo |
Competitor details reflect publicly documented information as of 2026; verify current license, status and features on getconvoy.io and GitHub.
Where Convoy is strong
- Open source and self-hostable. Convoy is open source (MPL 2.0 as of 2026) and you can run the whole gateway on your own infrastructure. If avoiding a third-party SaaS for compliance, data-residency or cost reasons matters to you, that's a real advantage.
- A proper webhook gateway. It handles both directions — ingesting webhooks from providers and sending webhooks out — with retries, rate limiting, circuit breaking and rolling secrets, which is a thoughtful feature set for a platform team.
- Static outbound IPs. Convoy supports routing outbound webhook events through a forward proxy with a static IP, useful when a receiving system needs to allow-list your sender.
- You own the deployment. Because it's your instance, you control scaling, retention and configuration end to end.
If you specifically want a self-hosted open-source gateway and you're prepared to run and maintain it yourself, Convoy is a reasonable pick and we'd happily point you there.
A practical caveat: as of 2026, Convoy's cloud offering and overall project momentum appear to have slowed. Verify its current status, roadmap and uptime on getconvoy.io and GitHub before relying on the hosted version in production.
Where Webhook Relay is different
It's fully managed, not self-hosted
The most basic distinction is that Webhook Relay is a hosted service. There's no gateway to deploy, no database to operate, no upgrade path to babysit, and no on-call rotation for the webhook layer itself. You point providers at a stable URL and run a lightweight agent where you need delivery. With Convoy you own all of that operational surface.
Delivery into private networks
This is the core technical difference. Convoy delivers to HTTP endpoints; the receiving service has to be reachable from the gateway. Webhook Relay's relay agent instead makes an outbound connection and forwards webhooks to wherever you point it:
relay forward --bucket payments http://localhost:8080/stripe
# or an internal host with no public IP
relay forward --bucket payments http://payments.internal:9000/hook
No inbound firewall rules, no public IP required, including a first-class Kubernetes operator for delivering into your cluster. This is closer to a secure outbound tunnel into your own infrastructure than to endpoint-to-endpoint delivery.
Tunnels, cron and a free request bin
Webhook Relay also offers general-purpose localhost tunnels for exposing any local service to the internet — not just webhooks — which Convoy doesn't do. It runs scheduled (cron) webhooks natively, useful for heartbeats and periodic jobs. And the free Webhook Bin lets anyone inspect incoming requests in the browser with no account required, a consumer-facing inspector Convoy doesn't ship.
Fan-out, transformations and static IP
Like Convoy, Webhook Relay can fan a single webhook out to multiple destinations, reshape payloads in flight with JavaScript or Lua transformations, and give you a static outgoing IP for allow-listing — but without you running and scaling the gateway yourself.
When to pick which
- Pick Convoy if you specifically want a self-hosted, open-source webhook gateway, you're comfortable running and maintaining it, and self-hosting matters more to you than a managed service. Verify its current status before committing.
- Pick Webhook Relay if you want a fully managed hosted service — especially delivery into localhost, internal services or Kubernetes — plus tunnels, cron and a free request bin, without operating any infrastructure, starting at $9.99/month.
Start free or compare plans. New to webhooks? Inspect one in the browser first.