headscale
A self-hosted, open-source implementation of the Tailscale control server, so your mesh VPN does not depend on a company.
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About headscale
Everything in Tailscale is open source except the GUI clients for Windows and macOS and the control server itself. That control server is the piece that exchanges WireGuard public keys between nodes, assigns addresses, draws boundaries between users and publishes advertised routes. headscale is an open reimplementation of it.
Run headscale and the ordinary Tailscale clients connect to it instead of to Tailscale's infrastructure, which means your network's coordination is under your control rather than a third party's. The project is explicit about its scope: it targets a single tailnet suitable for self-hosters and hobbyists, not a multi-tenant service.
It is command-line and configuration-file driven, with packages for Debian, Fedora, Arch, openSUSE, FreeBSD, macOS and plain binaries.
Strengths
- Removes the dependency on Tailscale's hosted control server
- Works with the standard Tailscale clients on every platform
- Packages for Debian, Fedora, Arch, openSUSE, FreeBSD and macOS
- Deliberately narrow scope, which keeps it comprehensible to run
Limitations
- Aimed at a single tailnet for self-hosters, not a multi-tenant deployment
- No graphical administration interface in the core project
- You must run and secure the control server, and its outage breaks new connections
- The project warns that the main branch may contain unreleased changes; match tags to releases
Details
- Pricing
- Free · Free and open source under a BSD 3-clause licence. The Tailscale clients it works with are free for personal use.
- License
- BSD-3-Clause
- Developer
- juanfont
- Platforms
- macOS, Linux, Self-hosted
- How it runs
- Self-hosted
- Account
- Not required
- Works offline
- Yes
- Best suited for
- Running a Tailscale-style mesh VPN without depending on Tailscale's servers
- Categories
- VPN and private networking
- Last verified
- Added
- Provenance
- Selected from the TechWalrus downloads catalog (VPN); facts checked against the developer's own pages, 3 sources on file.