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Headscale Alternatives
Similar projects and alternatives to headscale
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InfluxDB
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.
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wg-easy
Discontinued The easiest way to run WireGuard VPN + Web-based Admin UI. [Moved to: https://github.com/wg-easy/wg-easy] (by WeeJeWel)
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Netmaker
Netmaker makes networks with WireGuard. Netmaker automates fast, secure, and distributed virtual networks.
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outline-apps
Outline Client and Manager, developed by Jigsaw. Outline Manager makes it easy to create your own VPN server. Outline Client lets you share access to your VPN with anyone in your network, giving them access to the free and open internet.
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SaaSHub
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
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netbird
Connect your devices into a secure WireGuard®-based overlay network with SSO, MFA and granular access controls.
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awesome-tunneling
List of ngrok/Cloudflare Tunnel alternatives and other tunneling software and services. Focus on self-hosting.
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yunohost
YunoHost is an operating system aiming to simplify as much as possible the administration of a server. This repository corresponds to the core code, written mostly in Python and Bash.
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frp
A fast reverse proxy to help you expose a local server behind a NAT or firewall to the internet.
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ziti
The parent project for OpenZiti. Here you will find the executables for a fully zero trust, application embedded, programmable network @OpenZiti
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firezone
Open-source VPN server and egress firewall for Linux built on WireGuard. Firezone is easy to set up (all dependencies are bundled thanks to Chef Omnibus), secure, performant, and self hostable.
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SaaSHub
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
NOTE:
The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives.
Hence, a higher number means a better headscale alternative or higher similarity.
headscale discussion
headscale reviews and mentions
Posts with mentions or reviews of headscale.
We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives
and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-06-01.
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A new generation of Tailscale access controls
Headscale creator here.
> Fun fact: Tailscale have an almost-assuredly-accurate count of Headscale users due to how few people disable the Tailscale client's telemetry which by default sends them real-time events about everything you do on a Headscale network. See KB1011: https://tailscale.com/kb/1011/log-mesh-traffic
That is not true. We actually instruct all the clients to send no logs - since at least three years:
https://github.com/juanfont/headscale/blame/main/hscontrol/t....
And also in the config example:
https://github.com/juanfont/headscale/blob/main/config-examp...
That said, I would have loved to know how many nodes use Headscale... :)
- Ditching Obsidian and building my own
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Tailscale has raised $160M
I've always been on the outside looking in, so I've never used Tailscale or its open-source brethren.
Would this service be comparable to Headscale[0]?
[0] https://github.com/juanfont/headscale
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An open source, self-hosted implementation of the Tailscale control server
I think it would be neat if headscale allowed peering / federating between instances. (Maybe after the ACL rework.) One of the main problems is address collisions.
So here's my proposal: commit to ipv6-only overlay network in the unique local address (ULA) range, then split up the remaining 121 bits into 20 low bits for device addresses (~1M) and 101 high bits that are the hash of the server's public key. Federate by adding the public key of the other instance and use policy and ACLs to manage comms between nodes.
I think it's a nice idea, but the maintainer kradalby said it's out of scope when I brought it up in 2023: https://github.com/juanfont/headscale/issues/1370
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Ask HN: How did you replace Teleport?
I think it does:
https://sourcegraph.com/search?q=context:global+repo:github....
https://github.com/juanfont/headscale/pull/847
I’m not sure how well does it support it though, and I can’t open the docs for some reason right now.
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Set up: VPN - Part 1
root@hz-headscale-tmp-1:~# export HEADSCALE_VERSION="0.23.0" \ && export HEADSCALE_ARCH="arm64" \ && wget --output-document=headscale.deb "https://github.com/juanfont/headscale/releases/download/v${HEADSCALE_VERSION}/headscale_${HEADSCALE_VERSION}_linux_${HEADSCALE_ARCH}.deb" <...redacted for brevity..> 2024-09-28 12:24:54 (189 MB/s) - ‘headscale.deb’ saved [17022910/17022910]
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The New Internet
> I still have to rely on a landlord.
This is a very good point. Counterpoint is self-hosting Headscale which I mentioned in another comment here: https://github.com/juanfont/headscale
Works with native Tailscale clients with a few config changes. I use it myself.
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List of ngrok/Cloudflare Tunnel alternatives and other tunneling software and services. Focus on self-hosting.
headscale - Open source implementation of Tailscale control server. Can be used with Tailscale's official open source client. Written in Go.
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Building a Managed Service Provider Business With Open Source
Headscale
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Russia has started indiscriminately blocking all OpenVPN/WireGuard connections
You can always use headscale. https://github.com/juanfont/headscale
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A note from our sponsor - InfluxDB
www.influxdata.com | 24 Jun 2025
Stats
Basic headscale repo stats
232
29,236
9.5
6 days ago
juanfont/headscale is an open source project licensed under BSD 3-clause "New" or "Revised" License which is an OSI approved license.
The primary programming language of headscale is Go.
Sponsored
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