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headscale vs NetBird: catalog facts
headscale	NetBird
Free Free and open source under a BSD 3-clause licence. The Tailscale clients it works with are…	Freemium The platform is open source under the AGPL and fully self-hostable at no cost. NetBird…
macOS, Linux, Self-hosted	Windows, macOS, Linux, Self-hosted
Removes the dependency on Tailscale's hosted control server Works with the standard Tailscale clients on every platform	Peer-to-peer WireGuard connections with no ports to open or firewall rules to write Access control by groups and rules, with SSO and multi-factor authentication
Aimed at a single tailnet for self-hosters, not a multi-tenant deployment No graphical administration interface in the core project	Needs a control plane, whether you host it or use theirs Self-hosting the full stack including identity integration is real work
Self-hosted	Downloadable app, Self-hosted
Open source	Open source
License: BSD-3-Clause	License: AGPL-3.0
No account needed	Account needed
Works offline	Needs internet
Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 21, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 21, 2026

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