Instead of Tailscale

Mesh VPN that makes your devices reachable anywhere.

Partly

Headscale is the same protocol with your own control plane, and it is the right answer if Tailscale's free tier stops fitting. The clients are still Tailscale's, which is either elegant or unsettling.

You lose: MagicDNS polish, the admin console, and DERP relays that are always up.

Start here

Headscale

BSD-3-Clausea weekendactive

One server and the official clients. You run the control plane; when it is down, new connections fail.

github.com/juanfont/headscale

A database, object storage or mail config, plus backups.

Also worth a look

NetBirdAGPL-3.0a weekendactive
Its own clients and its own ideas. Complete, more moving parts.
github.com/netbirdio/netbird netbird.io
wg-easyAGPL-3.0a containeractive
Plain WireGuard with a web UI. No mesh, no NAT traversal.
github.com/wg-easy/wg-easy wg-easy.github.io/wg-easy/latest

Head to head

Headscale vs NetBirdHeadscale keeps the Tailscale clients you already have. NetBird is a whole product of its own.

What the desk has written

Facts checked 8 November 2026. Licences, activity and archive status come from each project's own repository; the verdict and the cost lines are the desk's.