Software Alternatives & Reviews

zrok VS Headscale

Compare zrok VS Headscale and see what are their differences

zrok logo zrok

Next-generation sharing platform built on top of OpenZiti

Headscale logo Headscale

An open source, self-hosted implementation of the Tailscale control server
  • zrok Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-02-09
  • Headscale Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-20

zrok 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 zrok and Headscale)
Localhost Tools
72 72%
28% 28
VPN
22 22%
78% 78
Testing
100 100%
0% 0
Cloud VPN
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, zrok should be more popular than Headscale. It has been mentiond 73 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.

zrok mentions (73)

  • List of ngrok/Cloudflare Tunnel alternatives and other tunneling software and services. Focus on self-hosting.
    Zrok - Aims for effortless sharing both publicly and privately. Supports multiple types of resources, including HTTP endpoints and files. Built on OpenZiti (see overlay section below). Apache 2 License. Written in Go. - Source: dev.to / 13 days ago
  • Tunnelmole, an ngrok alternative (open source)
    Have you tried https://zrok.io/? Its open source so you can self-host with custom domains, has a free SaaS incl. Reserved shares which give static, vanity URLs, and includes internet hardening/auth. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
  • Tunnelmole, an ngrok alternative (open source)
    Also https://zrok.io/. Its open source, and has a free SaaS. Its also more comprehensive than Tunnelmore, e.g., supporting TCP or UDP tunnels. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
  • Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters
    Another option is using zrok - https://zrok.io/. Its open source so you could build it directly into Bluesky and either host the backend yourself or use the zrok free SaaS. Zrok also has SDKs so you could embed the capability directly into your binaries without having a separate agent. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • Ask HN: What new shell tools have recently excited you?
    Not so much a shell tool, just a tool that one controls with the shell, but https://zrok.io/ really is amazing. It can serve the purpose of ngrok making local stuff accessible globally, but with a really cool open distributed backend system. Bluetuith looks amazing although I haven't tried it yet or had a use case. But it should be fantastic for setting up Bluetooth on a raspberry pi. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months 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 / 13 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 zrok and Headscale, you can also consider the following products

Pinggy.io - Public URLs for localhost without downloading any binary

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.

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

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

localhost.run - Instantly share your localhost environment!

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