Tailscale alternatives

Open-source alternatives

• Headscale

  Fit: PartialCore overlap exists; named gaps need replacing or rebuilding.Fit is not feature parity. A Tier ANo paid feature gates in the self-run edition BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License A permissive license similar to the <a href="/licenses/bsd-2-clause/">BSD 2-Clause License</a>, but with a 3rd clause that prohibits others from using the name of the copyright holder or its contributors to promote derived products without written consent. May Commercial useModificationDistributionPrivate use Must License and copyright notice No LiabilityWarranty Summary from GitHub's choosealicense.com Self-hostable: yesYou can run it on your own server.

  Use compatible Tailscale clients configured for a new Headscale control-server URL; re-register nodes and recreate policy, DNS and routes. One tailnet, small-organisation focus; no built-in web UI or promised enterprise-service parity.

• NetBird Community Edition

  Fit: PartialCore overlap exists; named gaps need replacing or rebuilding.Fit is not feature parity. B Tier BPaid extras for admin, identity or audit BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License A permissive license similar to the <a href="/licenses/bsd-2-clause/">BSD 2-Clause License</a>, but with a 3rd clause that prohibits others from using the name of the copyright holder or its contributors to promote derived products without written consent. May Commercial useModificationDistributionPrivate use Must License and copyright notice No LiabilityWarranty Summary from GitHub's choosealicense.com GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 Permissions of this strongest copyleft license are conditioned on making available complete source code of licensed works and modifications, which include larger works using a licensed work, under the same license. Copyright and license notices must be preserved. Contributors provide an express grant of patent rights. When a modified version is used to provide a service over a network, the complete source code of the modified version must be made available. May Commercial useModificationDistributionPatent usePrivate use Must License and copyright noticeState changesDisclose sourceNetwork use is distributionSame license No LiabilityWarranty Summary from GitHub's choosealicense.com Self-hostable: yesYou can run it on your own server.

  Re-enrol devices with NetBird clients and recreate identities, DNS, routing and access policies. Community includes networking but enterprise provisioning, approvals and flow observability require the commercial self-hosted license; Tailscale platform extensions are not interchangeable.