What is Torollo?

Torollo is a browser-based lab for practicing backend architecture and network fundamentals entirely on your own computer. The canvas is no drawing toy: dropping a card starts an actual container on your local Docker daemon, so Postgres, Redis, MongoDB, RabbitMQ, an Nginx balancer, Ubuntu hosts, auto-scaling groups, subnets, NAT and firewall rules all genuinely exist while you play. Subnet isolation rides on Docker bridge networks, security-group policies become iptables entries inside each container, and the gateway uses real ip_forward plus MASQUERADE routing. In-browser terminals exec into any running container, and data explorers let you fire live SQL or inspect stored keys. The teaching layer is a set of graded roadmaps whose validators probe your running lab — schema contents, port reachability, HTTP replies — before a step turns green. Roadmap files are open JSON you can author or import yourself; three are free while a paid incident bundle is sold separately. Launch it via npx or the included Compose stack; nothing leaves your machine unless you opt into anonymous telemetry. One caveat: there is no login at all, so exposing it beyond localhost hands Docker control to whoever can reach the port.

Should you self-host Torollo?

Torollo scores 47/100 on selfhost.directory (how scoring works) and ranks #15 of 30 in Education. It has 449 GitHub stars.

It shipped 10 stable releases in the past year. The latest, v1.2.5, came out on 10 September 2026. New versions land roughly every 2 days.

Setup is easy: most people get it running in one sitting. It is MIT-licensed and written mostly in Typescript.

Its closest alternative on selfhost.directory is CTFd (70/100, 6 894 stars). It scores higher overall, so compare the two before you pick. See Torollo vs CTFd side by side.

Features

Anonymous opt-in telemetryOpt-in only; can be hard-disabled by self-hosters at build time.
Auto scaling groups
Built-in database explorers
CLI environment diagnostics
Custom roadmap import (JSON/zip)
Guided auto-graded learning roadmaps
In-browser web terminals
Multilingual UI (English/French)
NAT Gateway
Nginx load balancer
Per-container resource limits
Security groups as iptables rules
Traffic simulator
VPC and subnet simulation