Port 8080: HTTP alternate

What uses port 8080

Port 8080 is used when an HTTP service shouldn’t or can’t take port 80: Tomcat, Jenkins, Spring Boot, many Docker images, HTTP proxies and local development servers. Ports above 1024 don’t need root on Linux, which is another reason apps listen on 8080 behind a reverse proxy or load balancer.

Should port 8080 be open to the internet?

Restrict access. Only open this port to known networks or users, for example your office IP, a VPN or behind authentication.

• If something unexpected answers on 8080, find the process with sudo lsof -i :8080 (macOS/Linux) or netstat -ano | findstr :8080 (Windows).
• Jenkins and other admin UIs on 8080 should not be public; put them behind a VPN or an authenticating proxy.

Check what is listening on port 8080

sudo ss -ltnp 'sport = :8080'

sudo lsof -nP -iTCP:8080 -sTCP:LISTEN

Get-NetTCPConnection -LocalPort 8080 -State Listen
netstat -ano | findstr :8080

No output means nothing is listening. If a service should be, check that it is running and which address it binds to: 127.0.0.1 only accepts local connections, 0.0.0.0 or :: accepts them on every interface.

Fix “address already in use” on port 8080

Another process already holds the port. Find it with the commands above, then stop that service properly, or end the process:

sudo kill $(sudo lsof -t -iTCP:8080 -sTCP:LISTEN)

Stop-Process -Id (Get-NetTCPConnection -LocalPort 8080 -State Listen).OwningProcess

Allow port 8080 from trusted networks only

The examples allow 8080 only from 10.0.0.0/8; replace it with your own private network, office IP or VPN range.

sudo ufw allow from 10.0.0.0/8 to any port 8080 proto tcp
# Close it again:
sudo ufw delete allow from 10.0.0.0/8 to any port 8080 proto tcp

sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-rich-rule='rule family="ipv4" source address="10.0.0.0/8" port port="8080" protocol="tcp" accept'
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "HTTP alternate 8080/TCP" -Direction Inbound -Protocol TCP -LocalPort 8080 -Action Allow -RemoteAddress 10.0.0.0/8

On AWS, Google Cloud and Azure, also allow the port in the security group or network firewall rules; host firewalls and cloud firewalls are separate.

Port 8080 with Docker

# Publish on localhost only. Docker's port rules bypass ufw and firewalld,
# so -p 8080:8080 would expose the port to the whole network.
docker run -d -p 127.0.0.1:8080:8080 jenkins/jenkins

The format is -p host_port:container_port. Containers on the same Docker network reach each other on the container port directly, without publishing it. Convert a long docker run command into a Compose file with docker run to compose.

Test port 8080 from another machine

nc -zv example.com 8080

Test-NetConnection example.com -Port 8080

Related ports

• Port 80 (HTTP): the default port for HTTP, unencrypted web traffic.
• Port 8443 (HTTPS alternate): a common alternate HTTPS port.
• Port 8000 (Development server (Django, Python)): a common port for development servers, including Django and Python’s http.server.
• Port 3000 (Development server / Grafana): the default port of many development servers and of Grafana.

More web ports

443 (HTTPS) . See all ports in the port lookup.

Sources

• IANA port registry: 8080

Spotted a mistake? Email hello@devtoolsmith.com and we’ll fix it.

Frequently asked questions