Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

TailScale VS pfSense

Compare TailScale VS pfSense and see what are their differences

TailScale logo 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.

pfSense logo pfSense

pfSense is a free and open source firewall and router that also features unified threat management, load balancing, multi WAN, and more
  • TailScale Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-17
  • pfSense Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-20

TailScale

$ Details
Release Date
2019 January
Startup details
Country
Canada
State
Ontario
City
Toronto
Founder(s)
Avery Pennarun
Employees
10 - 19

TailScale videos

The Byte - Tailscale Private networks made easy

pfSense videos

pfsense Firewall Setup and Features in Depth Version 2.4

More videos:

  • Review - Pfsense: 5 Reasons to Use It
  • Review - Netgate SG-3100 Teardown / Speedtest / Review of this powerful pfsense packet pusher!

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to TailScale and pfSense)
VPN
100 100%
0% 0
Cyber Security
0 0%
100% 100
Security & Privacy
100 100%
0% 0
Perimeter Security And Firewalls

User comments

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Reviews

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

TailScale Reviews

  1. They make the already great wireguard even better! Installation and configuration is a breeze, can easily connect to machines behind firewall(s) without altering anything.

    Definitely made life easier.


7 Ngrok Alternatives & Competitors for App Tunneling, Free & Paid
Tailscale allows you to create a secure virtual private network between your servers, computers, and cloud instances using the WireGuard protocol from a binary executable.
Source: onboardbase.com

pfSense Reviews

The top 10 alternatives to OpenVPN
Netgate offers secure networking solutions, including pfSense Plus and TNSR software, which provide firewall, router, and VPN functionalities. These solutions cater to personal users, professional users, and organizations seeking secure and reliable internet connectivity.
Best pfSense Software Alternatives and Competitors
pfSense Software firewall is a robust, open-source security solution that is compatible with any hardware and can be tailored to meet your specific needs. It is a widely used technology, and many individuals seek dependable, popular software solutions with multi-device support, multiple concurrent connections, and protocol selections. Despite its usefulness, pfSense has...
The Best Open Source Router OS Software for Large or Small Networks
pfSense is a free and open-source router and firewall operating system based on the FreeBSD operating system. It is designed to be used on standard x86 hardware and can be deployed as a virtual machine or on dedicated hardware. pfSense offers advanced features and capabilities that are typically found in commercial routers and firewalls, making it an ideal solution for small...
Best free Linux router and firewall distributions of 2023
pfSense is one of the most popular operating systems today. It's a BSD-based system, similar to OPNSense, but with a longer history. pfSense started in 2004, and since then, it has grown to be the most well-known open-source platform in the industry. Although it gradually loses users to OPNsense, it's still an excellent system for new users because it has the most extensive...
Source: teklager.se
11 Best pfsense Alternatives To Secure Your Network
Unlike those of other available pfSense competitors, its capabilities allow it to be compared to commercial firewalls. You can also customize the pfSense firewall to match your needs based on the level of security and protection you want, as well as your specialist knowledge.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, TailScale seems to be a lot more popular than pfSense. While we know about 504 links to TailScale, we've tracked only 10 mentions of pfSense. 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.

TailScale mentions (504)

  • Enhancing AWS VPC Security: Accessing Your Network with a Private Jumpbox using Tailscale
    In today's cloud-centric world, ensuring the security of your AWS resources is paramount. I was recently working on a cloud project and wanted a secure way to access the VPC remotely without using EC2 Instance Connect. This is when I came up with the idea to try using Tailscale VPN. I had already been tinkering with Tailscale on my home network and noticed how powerful it was. In this post, I will share how you... - Source: dev.to / 9 days ago
  • A list of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS offerings that have free tiers of interest to devops and infradev
    Tailscale — Zero config VPN, using the open-source WireGuard protocol. Installs on MacOS, iOS, Windows, Linux, and Android devices. Free plan for personal use with 100 devices and three users. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • 🛡️4 Top Database Security Tools in 2024 🏆🔥
    Tailscale is a VPN service that makes the devices and applications you own accessible anywhere in the world, securely and effortlessly. It enables encrypted point-to-point connections using the open source WireGuard® protocol, which means only devices on your private network can communicate with each other. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • I have made a smalll NAS server using samba. What is the port to fwd to get to it externally
    Tailscale is another way of doing it. I'm using it to access my Pi's Samba shares from my phone but it works from Windows as well. Source: 6 months ago
  • Macbook air M1 used with Remote Desktop
    My recommendation would be to use Tailscale (https://tailscale.com/) so you don't expose RDP to the internet. The basic Remote Desktop Client will work but if you want something more complex, Remote Desktop Manager is great https://devolutions.net/remote-desktop-manager/. Source: 6 months ago
View more

pfSense mentions (10)

  • Need some help on setting up home network
    Https://pfsense.org (netgate hardware is used in businesses). Source: about 1 year ago
  • Is pfsense.org down, or is it just me?
    I am having trouble seeing available packages, updating pkg, or getting a response from pfsense.org. Is anyone else seeing this or am I going to spend the rest of my day chasing bugs? Source: over 1 year ago
  • Help with VLAN
    From the PIA Client to pfsense.org PING pfsense.org (208.123.73.69) from 10.6.112.128: 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 208.123.73.69: icmp_seq=0 ttl=49 time=49.455 ms 64 bytes from 208.123.73.69: icmp_seq=1 ttl=49 time=51.927 ms 64 bytes from 208.123.73.69: icmp_seq=2 ttl=49 time=49.333 ms 64 bytes from 208.123.73.69: icmp_seq=3 ttl=49 time=49.133 ms 64 bytes from 208.123.73.69: icmp_seq=4 ttl=49 time=49.027 ms ... Source: over 1 year ago
  • Can Surveillance Station record offsite cameras ?
    The above setup is critical to a reliable system. I'd use enterprise quality routers for a store and home connection. I personally use https://pfsense.org but there are many to choose from and several open source. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Exposing Synology to web: best/practical practices?
    What I would do is put that thing in DMZ and install a good router behind it like https://www.pfsense.org. No affiliation, just been my router for many years. There's also it's sibling https://opnsense.org. There are many, just get a enterprise quality router. Source: almost 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing TailScale and pfSense, you can also consider the following products

ZeroTier - Extremely simple P2P Encrypted VPN

MikroTik RouterOS - The main product of MikroTik is a Linux-based operating system known as MikroTik RouterOS.

OpenVPN - OpenVPN - The Open Source VPN

OPNsense - OPNsense® you next open source firewall. Free Download. High-end Security Made Easy™. Offers Intrusion Prevention, Captive Portal, Traffic Shaping and more.

ngrok - ngrok enables secure introspectable tunnels to localhost webhook development tool and debugging tool.

OpenWrt - OpenWrt is an open-source firmware based on Linux for wireless routers