Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Tinc VPN VS Headscale

Compare Tinc VPN VS Headscale and see what are their differences

Tinc VPN logo Tinc VPN

tinc is a Virtual Private Network (VPN) daemon that uses tunnelling and encryption to create a...

Headscale logo Headscale

An open source, self-hosted implementation of the Tailscale control server
  • Tinc VPN Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-25
  • Headscale Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-20

Tinc VPN videos

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Headscale videos

Testing out headscale locally for homelab setup

More videos:

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

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Tinc VPN and Headscale)
VPN
52 52%
48% 48
Security & Privacy
61 61%
39% 39
Cloud VPN
48 48%
52% 52
Tool
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Headscale should be more popular than Tinc VPN. It has been mentiond 42 times since March 2021. 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.

Tinc VPN mentions (12)

  • Would we still create Nebula today?
    No love for tinc[1]? It's the granddaddy of mesh networking, long before Wireguard, and while it's not quite zeroconf, it's very simple to setup and maintain. It also runs on everything. [1]: https://tinc-vpn.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • Tunneling to Synology NAS without opening ports.
    Two other options are Tinc https://tinc-vpn.org/ or Nebula https://www.defined.net/nebula/. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Port Forward Security & Alternatives
    And there is Tinc; the OG overlay network. I don't have experience with this. Seemed a bit of a pain to setup. https://tinc-vpn.org. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • WireGuard multihop available in the Mullvad app
    For what its worth I have used the open source Tinc VPN [1] for mesh multihop routing for ages. It is nowhere near as fast as Wireguard but I could envision Tinc incorporating support for Wireguard if the author were so inclined. Like you mentioned Tinc does not mesh with other VPN's AFAIK. [1] - https://tinc-vpn.org/. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
  • You may not need Cloudflare Tunnel. Linux is fine
    This is actually very simple in concept and is just as simple or even simpler to do with tinc (https://tinc-vpn.org). Since I can use tinc in bridge mode, I can run tinc on the upstream server and on a local machine which then provides access to several physical machines without running extra software on each of those machines, which is particularly useful for machines that are resource limited, like my Macintosh... - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
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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 / 16 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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What are some alternatives?

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

ZeroTier - Extremely simple P2P Encrypted VPN

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.

Radmin VPN - Radmin VPN allows you to securely connect computers, located behind firewalls. Download it Free.

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

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

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