Teams usually start looking beyond Tailscale when the bill follows headcount rather than machines, when the free plan stops at non-commercial use, or when the control server has to sit on their own hardware. The options below range from a self-run copy of Tailscale's coordination server to metered cloud meshes and bare WireGuard.
Short answer: Places 1 to 3 go to challengers, vendors outside the best-known brands in a category, wherever the category has them; the established names follow from place 4 in their ranked order. For Tailscale users, the top three picks from our mesh VPN software ranking are Headscale, NetBird and Nebula. Pick Headscale if you want the Tailscale client experience with a control server you run. All 11 alternatives below are ranked products from Best Mesh VPN Software in 2026, and each says where it differs from Tailscale.
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Pricing: Per-user monthly seats in Personal, Standard and Premium tiers, a free Personal plan for non-commercial use, custom Enterprise and add-ons priced separately
Established in: United States
Built for: Engineering-led teams linking servers, clusters and laptops on one private network
Not for: Buyers needing web filtering, CASB or branch SD-WAN
01
Why buyers look past Tailscale
01
The meter is the person, not the machine
Tailscale prices per user: Standard is $8 a month and Premium $18, both with unlimited devices. A small group with many servers is well served, but a large staff with a handful of devices each pays for every seat. Mesh tools that count hosts or active machines can come out cheaper for fleets of idle or shared devices.
02
Limits sit behind the tier you pick
The Personal plan is free for up to 6 users but only for non-commercial use. ACL groups rise from 3 on Personal to 10 on Standard and 300 on Premium, and just-in-time access, flow logs and log streaming start at Premium. Multiple tailnets and extra ephemeral resources have no public price on the page we read.
03
Coordination runs on the vendor's side
Tailscale's home page describes a hosted connectivity platform, and the repository README speaks of the hosted service without a self-hosted control plane. The client is BSD-3-Clause, yet the account terms name entities in Toronto and Delaware and New York law. Organisations that want the control server under their own roof look at the self-run options.
you want applications to be reachable without opening network ports at all
#9
03
What each one does differently
1
Headscale
Not stated by the vendor · See profile
Headscale reimplements the Tailscale control server as open source under BSD-3-Clause, so existing Tailscale clients can point at a server you operate. It is maintained by Kristoffer Dalby and Juan Font, serves one tailnet and is aimed at personal or small open-source use. The site lists no price, and its pages say little about OIDC or ACL support.
Switch from Tailscale if you want the Tailscale client experience with a control server you run.
NetBird counts only users and machines that logged in during the billing period. Free covers 5 users and 100 machines with SSH, private DNS and network routes; Team costs EUR 6 per user and Business EUR 12, with 100 machines plus 10 per user. The software can run on NetBird Cloud or on your own Linux VM with Docker Compose.
Switch from Tailscale if your device count is large or idle and you would rather pay for active use.
Nebula began at Slack and is MIT-licensed; Defined Networking sells the managed version per enrolled host. The free plan covers 100 hosts with a managed lighthouse, SSO and a web interface, two external-host routes included. Pro is $1 per host a month with unlimited hosts and up to 100 routes, and lighthouses are not billed.
Switch from Tailscale if you want to price by machine at about a dollar each.
Netmaker is Apache 2.0 with a separate licence on its pro directory, and it comes as cloud SaaS, an Ubuntu 24.04 VM install or on-premises software. The free Community tier stops at 3 users and 10 nodes; Professional is $99 a month for 10 users and 100 nodes. The pricing page also shows a per-connection model that it does not reconcile.
Switch from Tailscale if you want a WireGuard mesh that you may host yourself or buy as SaaS.
Firezone is access control first: per-user and per-group policies over WireGuard tunnels, with sign-in through Okta, Google, Entra or any OIDC provider. You pick a Cloud EU or Cloud US account, billed in euros or dollars. The README says production self-hosting is not officially supported. Starter is free; Team amounts were not shown on the pages we read.
Switch from Tailscale if you want group policies and an EU-hosted cloud account instead of a flat mesh.
ZeroTier charges for networks and devices rather than people. Essential is $18 a month with 10 devices and unlimited users, Scale $179 with 100 devices, and extra devices cost $2.00 or $1.80 each. Personal is free for 10 users and 10 devices, non-commercial only. Its Quantum edition can run air-gapped with post-quantum algorithms.
Switch from Tailscale if a small team with a fixed device count wants flat monthly pricing.
Innernet is an MIT-licensed project from the tonarino organisation, built on WireGuard and using CIDR ranges as access rules. You create the coordination server yourself. Its README says it has had no independent security audit and that official testing covers Linux and macOS. There is no price, plan or hosted service.
Switch from Tailscale if you are comfortable running your own server and like network ranges as policy.
WireGuard is the encrypted tunnel itself, offered as an open source project with a donation page and kernel parts under GPLv2. Each peer's public key maps to allowed tunnel addresses, and roaming is built in. It has no control plane, so every peer list is written by hand and a large mesh means managing each pair.
Switch from Tailscale if you only need a few fixed tunnels and want no extra software layer.
Pritunl is a server-centred VPN you install on Ubuntu, Debian or Rocky Linux with MongoDB behind it, speaking OpenVPN, WireGuard and IPsec. Community is free for one host; Premium is $10 a month per host and Enterprise $70 with replicated servers and failover. Users and devices are unlimited. Pritunl, Inc. lists a Seattle address.
Switch from Tailscale if a central gateway for remote staff suits you better than a peer mesh.
Octelium, from Octelium Labs, LLC, runs on Kubernetes without any vendor control plane. Policies written in CEL and OPA are checked on each request at the application layer, covering HTTP, SSH, PostgreSQL and more. Cluster parts are AGPL-3.0 and clients Apache-2.0. The enterprise package is free for personal and internal evaluation use only.
Switch from Tailscale if you already operate Kubernetes and want per-request policy over service access.
OpenZiti connects services by cryptographic identity instead of IP address, and applications embed its SDKs. NetFoundry, Inc. sponsors the Apache 2.0 project and sells Managed SaaS and supported Self-Hosted editions, while the community edition carries no support. The documentation we read shows no price, so a budget needs a conversation with NetFoundry.
Switch from Tailscale if you want applications to be reachable without opening network ports at all.
You want Tailscale's client with a server you operate
Headscale: It is an open source implementation of the Tailscale control server under BSD-3-Clause, for a single tailnet.
02
You have many machines and few of them online at once
NetBird: Billing counts only users and machines that logged in during the period, and the free plan covers 5 users and 100 machines.
03
You want to pay per machine rather than per person
Nebula: Pro is $1 per host a month with unlimited hosts, and the free plan covers 100 hosts.
04
You need group-based access policies on an EU cloud account
Firezone: Policies work per user and group over WireGuard, and accounts can live on Firezone Cloud EU, billed in euros.
05
You run Kubernetes and want policy checked per request
Octelium: Policies written in CEL and OPA apply at the application layer, and the cluster parts are AGPL-3.0.
04
When Tailscale is still the right choice
Tailscale remains a reasonable choice when you want a hosted service that works after a short setup and your user count is modest. The Personal plan is free for up to 6 users on non-commercial work, Standard adds SCIM and device posture, and custom-domain tailnets get a 14-day Enterprise trial. Price the per-seat bill against your headcount before leaving.
05
What moving off Tailscale involves
01
Tailnet names, tags and ACLs need rewriting
Access rules written for Tailscale groups and tags do not transfer as files. Export your current ACL policy, list who reaches which machine, and rebuild it in the target's own rules. Headscale is the closest in spirit; the others use their own policy models.
02
Devices must be enrolled again
Each laptop and server joins the new network with a new client or key. Plan a window for servers behind subnet routes, because a route announced by one system may clash with the same range announced by another while both run side by side.
06
Questions about replacing Tailscale
6 answers
What does Tailscale cost per user?
The pricing page we read shows Personal at $0 for up to 6 users, non-commercial only, Standard at $8 per user a month and Premium at $18 per user a month. Enterprise is custom priced. Prices carry a dollar sign and no currency code.
Can I run the Tailscale control server myself?
Not from Tailscale: its pages describe a hosted service. Headscale is an open source implementation of the control server for a single tailnet, and NetBird, Netmaker and Octelium can all be installed on your own infrastructure.
Which alternatives bill by machine instead of by person?
Nebula charges $1 per enrolled host on Pro, NetBird bills active users and machines, and ZeroTier bundles 10 or 100 devices into its Essential and Scale plans. Pritunl bills per host rather than per user.
Is there a free option for a company?
Nebula's free plan covers 100 hosts and NetBird's covers 5 users and 100 machines, neither marked as non-commercial on the pages we read. Tailscale's and ZeroTier's free plans are restricted to personal, non-commercial use.
Is the Tailscale client open source?
The client repository, holding the tailscaled daemon and the CLI, is under BSD-3-Clause. Some graphical wrappers for macOS, iOS and Windows are not open source, and the coordination service is hosted by Tailscale.
Which options have a vendor in Europe?
None of the pages we read for these mesh tools state a country of establishment, apart from Pritunl's Seattle address. Firezone offers a Cloud EU account and NetBird a self-hosted route, so check each contract for where data and the company sit.
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Sources
Checked 7 November 2026
Tailscale pricing: Personal, Standard $8, Premium $18, Enterprise custom, ACL group limits, 14-day trial, no public price for multiple tailnets.
Tailscale terms: New York governing law, entities in Toronto and Delaware.
Tailscale home: Hosted connectivity platform, no self-hosted control server described.
Founder of The Knowledge Engineers and of 2 Steps Ahead, an AI search visibility agency. Editorially responsible for every page on this site; research and drafting are AI-assisted.
Sebastiaan Smits wrote and checked this page, most recently on 7 November 2026. See how we review.
