tailscale VS ZeroTier

Compare tailscale vs ZeroTier and see what are their differences.

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tailscale ZeroTier
1,047 345
23,239 15,545
4.2% 1.4%
9.9 7.2
2 days ago about 1 month ago
Go C++
BSD 3-clause "New" or "Revised" License GNU General Public License v3.0 or later
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

tailscale

Posts with mentions or reviews of tailscale. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-06-19.
  • Self-hosting like a final boss: what I actually run on my home lab (and why)
    16 projects | dev.to | 19 Jun 2025
    Tailscale: mesh VPN, zero config. Just install and forget. Perfect for personal/private access.
  • Your laptop can run a full devops stack here’s how I set mine up
    3 projects | dev.to | 19 Jun 2025
    Optional: Use Tailscale to access your lab from any device securely
  • HomeLab
    18 projects | dev.to | 17 Jun 2025
    For accessing my server from outside and anywhere, I use Tailscale. This service creates a VPN between all your desired devices. It offers much better security and less risk than using port forwarding or exposing ports/services to the whole internet. Runs fantastic — and even for free!
  • EasyTier – P2P mesh VPN written in Rust using Tokio
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 2 Jun 2025
    How does this compare to Tailscale?

    Rust vs Go is one difference. What else?

    Tailscale: https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale

  • A new generation of Tailscale access controls
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 1 Jun 2025
    > For an example of how invasive this is for the average user, this person discovered Tailscale trying to collect ~18000 data points per week about their network usage based on the number of blocked DNS requests for `log.tailscale.com`: https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/15326

    18000 data points per week seems IMHO pretty low (only 1.7 requests per minute for a whole network? Unlikely, even my Android phone does way more that 1.7 requests per minute just to ad networks, nevermind everything else on the network summed), it's probably way more.

    18000 data points is also a lie, that's a different issue - the issue of UDP DNS sucking in general so your average application/OS keeps reissuing requests if they think the UDP packet got dropped.

  • Golang for FFI Flutter Plugins
    5 projects | dev.to | 1 Jun 2025
    But I only saw the usability of Go as an alternative to Python for scripting/CLI application development, and obviously for backend development. Especially when it comes to gRPC (but that's a story for another time). I never looked at Go as an option for the development of FFI Flutter plugins, until sometime last year, I got acquainted with Tailscale. Tailscale has built its products around Go, including mobile applications. For reference, I'd strongly encourage you to check the source code of their Android client and the Swift library inside the main libtailscale repository. So, somebody did it... A successful company uses Golang for its clients.
  • Ditching Obsidian and building my own
    29 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 18 May 2025
    Tailscale has made all of their client source code available for anyone to view so if you want to confirm that you’re not sending unencrypted data or keys through their servers you’re more than free to do so.

    https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale

    I think there is some merit to setting up wireguard (e.g. you want more devices than what Tailscale offers for free, or their servers become unreliable for some reason)

    But people who push the “scarey boogeyman will look at your data” with Tailscale are either technically illiterate or overly-paranoid.

  • The Umbrel OS for home-lab, self-hosted tech solutions
    1 project | dev.to | 11 May 2025
    For example, the home networking, personal VPN, we may use Tailscale. https://tailscale.com/ which is also listed on the Umbrel App Store.
  • How I made my Home Server accessible outside my home
    4 projects | dev.to | 1 May 2025
    Here then comes VPN (Virtual Private Network) which is basically establishes a protected network connection when using public networks. I already have relevant experiences with this one as some of my previous projects involves private repositories that can only be accessed by connecting into the client's VPN. There are many solutions for this specific use case like WireGuard, but in this particular blog, I chose Tailscale.
  • Optimizing My Dev Workflow in 2025
    7 projects | dev.to | 16 Apr 2025
    I had 2 old laptops sitting around, both 10 years old. I turned both into a home server. Installed Ubuntu Server, set up Docker, and now I run all my containers remotely. With Tailscale, I can securely connect to it like it's on the same network. This way, my MacBook doesn't have to run MongoDB, Redis, or RabbitMQ anymore. That alone freed up a lot of memory. I can even run other services like HomeAssistant, MailHog, Immich, etc.

ZeroTier

Posts with mentions or reviews of ZeroTier. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-07-03.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing tailscale and ZeroTier you can also consider the following projects:

netbird - Connect your devices into a secure WireGuard®-based overlay network with SSO, MFA and granular access controls.

playit-minecraft-plugin - A Minecraft plugin to make your server public without port forwarding using playit.gg

headscale - An open source, self-hosted implementation of the Tailscale control server

AdGuardHome - Network-wide ads & trackers blocking DNS server

Nebula - A scalable overlay networking tool with a focus on performance, simplicity and security

InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads
InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.
www.influxdata.com
featured
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews
SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
www.saashub.com
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the 4th most popular programming language
based on number of references?