Gavin Wiggins

Reverse Proxy and Basic Auth with Caddy

Written on October 26, 2025

Below is a Caddyfile with a reverse proxy from HTTP port 80 to the local host port 5000. This will direct HTTP traffic to the service or app running on port 5000 on the server. Basic authentication is enabled where the username is bart and the hashed password is 12$3asDfjl45$97845ashLKdjFg. Use tabs, not spaces, for indentation in the Caddyfile.

:80 {
    basic_auth {
        bart 12$3asDfjl45$97845ashLKdjFg
    }
    reverse_proxy localhost:5000
}

The Caddy command show below was used to hash the password. This example creates a password hash for the password password123.

caddy hash-password -p password123

In the same directory as the Caddyfile, use the commands given below to start or stop the Caddy server:

# Start the caddy server
sudo caddy start

# Stop the caddy server
sudo caddy stop

More information about Caddy is available at https://caddyserver.com.