RTK2go Alternative: When a Public Caster Isn't Enough

RoboGNSS is an RTK2go alternative for two things a public caster isn't built for: authenticated rover access and an archive of your base's observations. RTK2go remains the right answer for free public sharing with unlimited rovers, and for a lot of base stations that is exactly the job. If you're searching for an alternative, it's usually because RTK2go's defining feature — everything on it is public — stopped being a feature for you. Here is the fair version of that comparison: what RTK2go does well, exactly where it stops, and how to move a base to a private caster in an afternoon.

What RTK2go is good at

RTK2go is a community caster run by SubCarrier Systems Corp., the makers of SNIP, on the same Pro edition of SNIP you can buy. It calls itself "the world's most popular (and free) NTRIP Caster," and by its own counters as of September 2026 it is big: 800+ base stations online at any moment, 11,000+ registered, 250,000+ users, 400 million sessions served. If you want to share corrections with anyone nearby, a public mountpoint on RTK2go does it with no rover accounts at all — rovers use a valid email address as the user name and none as the password. Bringing a new base online, sharing with a club or a co-op, giving a neighbor's tractor a fix: all of that works today.

There are no limits on how long a stream stays up or how many rovers ride it, and the caster emails you when it detects a problem with your stream. The rules exist so thousands of people can share one machine.

Where a public caster stops

Every limit below follows from the same design: the caster is open, and one operator runs it by hand for everyone.

The password question. The "rtk2go password" people search for is the base station password. You pick it (4–20 characters) when you register the mountpoint, or one is assigned and emailed to you once your registration is processed — by hand, "typically under 8 hours to complete, somewhat longer on weekends," after you reply to a confirmation email promptly (the form says 48 hours at the top and 24 at the bottom). To be fair, that wait is for the permanent password, not for the stream: "using the temp password below you can start sending in data immediately," though the temporary password only works over an NTRIP Rev1 connection. There is no account page to look it up on. Forgot it, or want to change it? "Just ping us at support[@]use-snip.com." Fine for a personal base station; an awkward dependency for a business.

Anyone can connect. Rovers don't need credentials, so you can't give one crew access and not another, and you can't cut off a specific rover. RTK2go's "Private" option only hides the mountpoint from the caster table — anyone who knows the name can still connect. By sending data you also consent to let others freely use it. If you need a genuinely private NTRIP stream, hiding the name is not access control.

No archive. RTK2go says it plainly: "We do not collect archival data from these streams and place them on an FTP site." Nothing you cast there can be pulled back out as RINEX for OPUS, PPP, or a PPK job. If you want the log, you keep it yourself.

No uptime promise, no per-base view. The terms ask you to hold the operator harmless "for any faults or loss – real or perceived." That's fair for a free service, and it says nothing about how reliable RTK2go actually is — it runs a live status page and emails you when the caster sees a problem with your stream, which is more than most casters do. What it doesn't give you is a per-base picture of what your rovers are receiving. A fleet on autosteer or a survey crew at day rate needs to know whether it was the base or the caster when a rover drops to float. RoboGNSS shows that live on a health dashboard; it does not send email alerts yet, and a dashboard is not an uptime guarantee either — RoboGNSS doesn't publish an availability commitment, so compare any you're offered separately.

The sharing rules. Corrections above 1 Hz are not allowed without prior clearance. A base that connects but sends no data is dropped after about 12 seconds. "Hundreds of failed connections" in a row block your IP — the ban notice reads "failed to connect over 300 times in a row" — for about three hours, longer for repeat offenders, and more than two push-in connections from the same IP "may mean a 24 hour ban." Registrations beyond two may get asked why, or for a donation. And RTK2go is not a test bench: using it for "product testing and validation" of NTRIP software is explicitly not allowed. None of that is unreasonable — a farm with three bases behind one router, or a receiver mid-reconfiguration, just trips it more easily.

RTK2go vs RoboGNSS

| | RTK2go | RoboGNSS | | --- | --- | --- | | Cost | Free; donations welcome | Free for 1 base station with 2 rover credentials; Pro $9/month, Fleet $29/month | | Who can connect | Anyone with the mountpoint name and a valid email; "Private" only hides the name from the caster table | Only rovers holding a credential you minted — per rover, crew, or machine, revocable one at a time | | Password control | Chosen or assigned at registration and emailed (a temporary Rev1-only password streams while you wait); forgotten or changed by emailing support | Upload token in the base panel whenever you need it; rotate it yourself from the dashboard — the base keeps streaming until it reconnects, then the old token is refused | | Archive / RINEX | None — "We do not collect archival data from these streams" | Raw archive; any window inside the retention period downloadable as RINEX: 7 days on Free, 30 on Pro, 90 on Fleet | | Encryption in transit | TLS on port 2102 for NTRIP Rev2 clients; port 2101 is plain | Plain NTRIP on ntrip.robognss.com:48449 today, v1 and v2; no TLS port is advertised yet | | Monitoring | Emails you when the caster detects a problem with your stream; live status page | Live health dashboard — 24-hour uptime, satellites per constellation, broadcast position checked against your declared position, anomaly flags. Email alerts are not shipped yet; Pro is first in line. Neither a status page nor a dashboard is an uptime guarantee | | Support | By email to support@use-snip.com; reservations processed by hand, typically under eight hours | support@robognss.com; priority support on Fleet |

Two things RTK2go wins outright: unlimited rovers on a free stream, and a public caster table with hundreds of bases in it. If your goal is to be found by strangers, stay.

Which one you want

Stay on RTK2go if you're sharing freely, bringing up a base you want strangers to find, or running community RTK where "anyone can connect" is the whole idea.

Move to a private caster if any of these is true:

A farm or fleet whose owner wants to see, per base, what the machines are getting during planting — satellites, message rate, position check — rather than guess.
A survey business whose base is part of the price of the job and shouldn't be a free service for competitors.
Per-rover access — a contractor for one season, a crew that changes, a machine you sold.
RINEX for OPUS or PPP — you want to establish or check the base position from its own observations, or hand a PPK job a base log. OPUS has its own observation-length requirements, so pull a window that meets them. On paid plans RoboGNSS can run the PPP survey for you from the archive.
A password you control — an upload token you can rotate yourself, without emailing anyone.

Does a private mountpoint encrypt my corrections?

No — on either caster. "Private" on RTK2go means the mountpoint is left out of the caster table; on RoboGNSS it means a rover must present a credential you issued. Neither changes what travels on the wire. RTK2go does offer TLS on port 2102 for NTRIP Rev2 clients. RoboGNSS serves plain NTRIP on ntrip.robognss.com:48449 today: the credential is what keeps strangers off your stream, not encryption, and RTCM corrections carry nothing secret. If your policy requires encrypted transport, ask that of any caster before you move.

Move a base over

Same four fields as RTK2go — host, port, mountpoint, password — with a different caster at the other end.

Create the base station at app.robognss.com. Name it, declare its surveyed position and datum, and copy the upload token from the base panel. It stays there whenever you need it, and you can rotate it from the dashboard.
Repoint the receiver. In its NTRIP server settings, replace rtk2go.com, port 2101, and your RTK2go password with the RoboGNSS caster — ntrip.robognss.com, port 48449 at the time of writing — your mountpoint, and the upload token as the password. Leave the username blank; the caster ignores it for uploads. The caster supports NTRIP v1 and v2 — check your receiver's transport and auth settings match (plain TCP, password-only for uploads). The connection is outbound, so there's no port forwarding.
Mint rover credentials — one per rover or crew — and update each rover's NTRIP client. Rovers can dial your mountpoint by name, or the AUTO mountpoint, where the credential decides which base they get.
Confirm RTCM on the dashboard, then RTK Fixed on the rover. The stream graph shows satellites per constellation, message rates, and the broadcast position checked against the one you declared; the fix itself is the rover's to report. Or skip the dashboard and ask your AI agent.

Want to keep your public mountpoint too? On Pro, forward the stream from RoboGNSS to RTK2go — or Onocoy, or any caster — so one base serves your private rovers and the public at once. Coming from a self-hosted SNIP instead? The SNIP migration guide covers that path, and the tractor post covers autosteer rovers.

Start with a free base station.