Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Headscale VS ZeroTier

Compare Headscale VS ZeroTier and see what are their differences

Headscale logo Headscale

An open source, self-hosted implementation of the Tailscale control server

ZeroTier logo ZeroTier

Extremely simple P2P Encrypted VPN
  • Headscale Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-20
  • ZeroTier Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-29

Headscale videos

Testing out headscale locally for homelab setup

More videos:

  • Review - Tutorial: Using Tailscale Overlay Network VPN with the Self Hosted Headscale Controller

ZeroTier videos

ZeroTier VS VPN and A Look At The Data Stream With Wireshark

More videos:

  • Review - Introducing the ZeroTier Edge
  • Review - Talking about ZeroTier VPN!

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Headscale and ZeroTier)
VPN
20 20%
80% 80
Cloud VPN
22 22%
78% 78
Security & Privacy
16 16%
84% 84
Localhost Tools
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Headscale and ZeroTier

Headscale Reviews

We have no reviews of Headscale yet.
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ZeroTier Reviews

Top Hamachi Alternatives for Virtual LAN Gaming in 2023
ZeroTier has fewer restrictions on this app. Also, it supports almost all operating systems. It has its own Android and iOS mobile applications. It not just offers VPN services but also provides SDN. The community of ZeroTier is huge; if you ever get stuck with your app or the LAN party, a community will always be able to help you out.
Best Free Hamachi Alternatives For You To Try in 2022
ZeroTier is the close second of the hamachi alternatives. The best trait of the tool is that instead of Windows, you can use ZeroTier on Mac, iOS, Android, and Linux devices. Single software to meet all your VPN needs on different devices and platforms. The tool is quite smart and is not at all like the traditional VPN tools.
15 Best Hamachi Alternatives for Gaming in Virtual LAN (Latest 2021)
ZeroTier creates a safe & secure network between computers, cloud, and mobile devices through its P2P functionality.
Source: growtechy.com
The 10 Best Open Source VPN Apps
According to the makers themselves, ZeroTier is a network hypervisor that allows users to create a virtual network. Accordingly, referring to ZeroTier as simply a VPN client would be an injustice to it. Users who are just looking for a VPN can also opt for this open-source software. Using this software, you won’t have to worry about different websites accessing your location...
11 Best Hamachi Alternatives for Virtual LAN Gaming
ZeroTier also supports almost all operating systems and also has its own Android and iOS mobile applications. It not just offers VPN services but also provides SDN. ZeroTier has a huge community and you won’t have to worry if you get into any trouble while setting up your LAN party. It offers low ping and even though it’s a VPN client it’s useful to setup Virtual LAN parties.

Social recommendations and mentions

Headscale might be a bit more popular than ZeroTier. We know about 42 links to it since March 2021 and only 35 links to ZeroTier. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Headscale mentions (42)

  • 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. - Source: dev.to / 15 days ago
  • Securely Accessing Private AWS Resources from GitHub Actions with TailScale
    One more thing, you can host Tailscale Control Server yourself if you want, which is a plus. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • A word of caution about Tailscale
    Https://github.com/juanfont/headscale not to mention but Tailscale has a very good culture, I’m sure they would give notice if they pull the rug. There are also many alternatives such as Zerotier and more are showing up every day and open source options. Source: 5 months ago
  • Connecting several hundreds IoT (raspberry pi's) devices with a VPN
    How about self-hosted Tailscale, known as Headscale. Source: 5 months ago
  • Mullvad on Tailscale: Privately browse the web
    You can run your own "head scale" control server and use their clients with it: https://github.com/juanfont/headscale Requires a lot more setup, but it is an option. I've been self-hosting headscale for some time and it is quite stable. - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
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ZeroTier mentions (35)

  • Setup a Local Wifi Lan
    If you just want to connect between your devices, you don't need any hardware. Just install zerotier on them. Source: 12 months ago
  • Father and Son family time not working :( LAN or Portforwarding hosting server on same network not working
    Hi there, I've tried hosting a server on my computer and then both my Dad and I try to play together. However, it's only worked once or twice when I hosted from playtogether.gg or when it worked once with the zerotier.com method. I've portforwarded, I've made sure both our firewalls were allowing 10578, nothing seems to work. We both have Skyrim Together fully installed on our SSE, and we just want it to work :(... Source: over 1 year ago
  • I'm speechless for services like Tailscale, what's the downside?
    I lived under a rock, and only today I found a service called Tailscale.com . I think other provider offers the same thing, one alternative seems to be zerotier.com. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Lab simulators
    I set up EVE-ng on a google cloud VM. Then immediately the question was how do I get access to the lab equip? I found this video explaining how to set up a virtual nic on the eve-ng VM, connect that to a cloud network in eve-ng, then connect mgmt interfaces from your devices to that. Then he used zerotier.com to setup a quick ssl vpn. Now I can turn off all inbound access to the VM and access all my lab... Source: over 1 year ago
  • Cheap and cheerful router with block list?
    I prefer Routerboard with arm cpu, because it support running ZeroTier and docker containers. Source: almost 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Headscale and ZeroTier, you can also consider the following products

TailScale - Private networks made easy Connect all your devices using WireGuard, without the hassle. Tailscale makes it as easy as installing an app and signing in.

Hamachi - Hamachi is a VPN service scaled to the unique needs of business owners.

NetBird - Connect your devices into a single secure private WireGuard®-based mesh network with SSO/MFA and manage access with just a few clicks.

Netmaker - Netmaker automates mesh VPN's and software-defined networks using WireGuard.

WireGuard - Fast, Modern, Secure VPN Tunnel

zrok - Next-generation sharing platform built on top of OpenZiti