What is Tailscale used for?

Tailscale builds private WireGuard-based networks between your devices; this repository holds the open-source client daemon and CLI. It is a good fit for reaching home or office machines remotely, connecting servers across clouds without public ports and replacing a traditional VPN for small teams.

Is Tailscale open source?

Yes. Tailscale is open source under the BSD-3-Clause licence. Its source code is on GitHub at tailscale/tailscale and is written mainly in Go.

Yes. Tailscale is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available, with paid plans from $8 per seat per month.

Can I self-host Tailscale?

Yes. Tailscale can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Tailscale an alternative to?

Tailscale is an open-source alternative to Twingate and NordLayer. Other open-source alternatives to Twingate include NetBird, Netmaker and Pangolin.

Is Tailscale actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Tailscale was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v1.102.5, published on 29 September 2026. The project has 37k stars on GitHub.

Tailscale: open-source alternative to Twingate, NordLayer

About Tailscale

Tailscale makes private networks between devices using the WireGuard protocol, with sign-in handled by existing identity providers and two-factor authentication. The GitHub repository contains most of the company's open-source code, notably the tailscaled daemon and the tailscale command-line tool. It is published under the BSD-3-Clause license and written in Go.

The daemon runs on Linux, Windows and macOS, with partial support on FreeBSD and OpenBSD. The iOS and Android apps reuse this code, while the graphical wrappers for some non-open platforms are not open source, so the full product is a mix of open and proprietary parts. Packages for many distributions are served from the project's package site, and the code can be built from source with the latest Go release. The service itself is hosted by Tailscale.

Key features

WireGuard-based private device networking
tailscaled daemon and tailscale CLI
Sign-in through SSO and two-factor authentication
Clients for Linux, Windows, macOS, iOS and Android
Packages for Synology, QNAP and Debian-style distros
Client source code under BSD-3-Clause

Good fit for

→Reaching home or office machines remotely
→Connecting servers across clouds without public ports
→Replacing a traditional VPN for small teams

Built with: Go
Tags: vpn; wireguard; networking; mesh-vpn; sso; 2fa; golang; zero-trust

Tailscale: questions and answers

What is Tailscale used for?: Tailscale builds private WireGuard-based networks between your devices; this repository holds the open-source client daemon and CLI. It is a good fit for reaching home or office machines remotely, connecting servers across clouds without public ports and replacing a traditional VPN for small teams.
Is Tailscale open source?: Yes. Tailscale is open source under the BSD-3-Clause licence. Its source code is on GitHub at tailscale/tailscale and is written mainly in Go.
Is Tailscale free?: Yes. Tailscale is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available, with paid plans from $8 per seat per month.
Can I self-host Tailscale?: Yes. Tailscale can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Tailscale an alternative to?: Tailscale is an open-source alternative to Twingate and NordLayer. Other open-source alternatives to Twingate include NetBird, Netmaker and Pangolin.
Is Tailscale actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Tailscale was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v1.102.5, published on 29 September 2026. The project has 37k stars on GitHub.