go-httpbin on Ubuntu 24.04

go-httpbin is a fast, dependency free HTTP request and response testing service, a Go implementation of the well known httpbin. It exposes a rich set of endpoints for exercising and debugging anything that speaks HTTP: echo endpoints such as /get and /post that reflect the method, headers, query arguments and body of a request back as JSON, status code endpoints such as /status/{code} that return any HTTP status you ask for, and utility endpoints for headers, client IP, redirects, delays, streaming, compressed responses, cookies, UUIDs and random bytes. This cloudimg image runs go-httpbin 2.24.0 from the official upstream release binary on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, as a hardened systemd service behind nginx.

go-httpbin is the predictable, controllable server you point your HTTP clients, SDKs, proxies, API gateways, load balancers and CI pipelines at when you need to verify how they handle a 429, a slow response, a redirect chain or a chunked stream. Because it is a single self contained Go binary it starts instantly, uses very little memory, and needs nothing configured to get going.

Application stack: go-httpbin binds to the loopback interface only, and nginx is the single network facing surface. nginx terminates TLS on port 443 with a per instance self signed certificate and fronts the entire service with HTTP basic authentication, while an unauthenticated health endpoint is available for load balancer and liveness probes and plain HTTP on port 80 redirects to HTTPS. This keeps the service from being abused as an open reflector or SSRF relay through its redirect and fetch endpoints.

Security is built in with no shared credentials, since go-httpbin ships with no authentication of its own and an unprotected instance is an open reflector. This image never exposes it that way and nothing secret is baked into the image. On the first boot of every instance, the image generates a unique HTTP basic authentication password for the user httpbin and a unique self signed TLS certificate, and writes the credentials to a root only file. Unauthenticated requests are rejected, and the service is reachable only over TLS with the per instance credentials.

go-httpbin is distributed under the MIT License, free and open source with no per CPU or per deployment fee. cloudimg is not affiliated with or endorsed by the go-httpbin project; go-httpbin is a mark of its owner. cloudimg provides packaging, the nginx TLS front, the loopback only service with per instance basic auth, the per instance credential automation, security patching, and 24/7 support with a guaranteed 24 hour response SLA.