Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Headscale

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

Headscale

Headscale Reviews and Details

This page is designed to help you find out whether Headscale is good and if it is the right choice for you.

Screenshots and images

  • Headscale Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-20

Features & Specs

  1. Open Source

    Headscale is open-source, meaning it is free to use, modify, and distribute. This promotes transparency and encourages community collaboration.

  2. Tailscale Compatibility

    Headscale is designed to be compatible with the Tailscale client, allowing users to leverage their existing Tailscale configurations in an alternative backend.

  3. Self-Hosted

    Headscale allows users to self-host their own coordination server, providing greater control over their network and data privacy.

  4. Community Support

    Being an open-source project, Headscale benefits from community-driven support and contributions, which may lead to rapid feature development and issue resolution.

  5. Scalability

    Users can scale their deployments according to their needs without being restricted by commercial licensing models.

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Videos

Testing out headscale locally for homelab setup

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

Social recommendations and mentions

We have tracked the following product recommendations or mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you see what people think about Headscale and what they use it for.
  • Setting up a home VPN server with WireGuard
    You can use headscale [1] (open source) as the mothership, and all the published clients (AFAIK) support pointing them to an alternative mothership. I set it up, and it worked, but regular Tailscale works so well out-of-the-box that I just used that instead of maintaining headscale. [1] https://github.com/juanfont/headscale. - Source: Hacker News / 23 days ago
  • Set up: VPN - Part 1
    Root@hz-headscale-tmp-1:~# export HEADSCALE_VERSION="0.23.0" \ && export HEADSCALE_ARCH="arm64" \ && wget --output-document=headscale.deb "https://github.com/juanfont/headscale/releases/download/v${HEADSCALE_VERSION}/headscale_${HEADSCALE_VERSION}_linux_${HEADSCALE_ARCH}.deb" <...redacted for brevity..> 2024-09-28 12:24:54 (189 MB/s) - โ€˜headscale.debโ€™ saved [17022910/17022910]. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • The New Internet
    > I still have to rely on a landlord. This is a very good point. Counterpoint is self-hosting Headscale which I mentioned in another comment here: https://github.com/juanfont/headscale Works with native Tailscale clients with a few config changes. I use it myself. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • SSH has become our universal (Unix) external access protocol
    Tailscale is just a commercial service that builds upon wireguard. It automatically generates certificates for each of your devices, ensures they're rotated and up to date, automatically configures routing and DNS between your devices and offers some additional functionality. Tailscale has open source clients but a proprietary server to do this, but you can use the open source alternative headscale instead: - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • 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 / over 1 year 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 / almost 2 years ago
  • A word of caution about Tailscale
    Https://github.com/juanfont/headscale not to mention but Tailscale has a very good culture, Iโ€™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: almost 2 years ago
  • Connecting several hundreds IoT (raspberry pi's) devices with a VPN
    How about self-hosted Tailscale, known as Headscale. Source: almost 2 years 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 / about 2 years ago
  • Admin-Friendly Mesh VPN with WireGuard?
    After browsing through, I've noticed that three options seem to be gaining traction: Netmaker, wg-easy, and headscale. I'm curious to know if these solutions are interchangeable, and if there are specific reasons to choose one over the others. I'd also like to understand if they are complete stacks, meaning, once set up, could I easily replace one admin GUI with another, or would I need to tear down and rebuild... Source: about 2 years ago
  • Which overlay network?
    Tailscale: Seems to have quite good NAT support and seems to do DNS resolution. Clients for most relevant platform - a well rounded package. But I find their plans to be prohibitive. Only 20 devices on the free plan. The first paid tier is 5 devices per 1 user, so 5 devices for me paying? A head scratcher. There is an open source control plane https://github.com/juanfont/headscale but given the clients are not... Source: about 2 years ago
  • [Nginx] Reverse Proxy through wireguard server through VPS
    If someone thinks that way they can just self host Tailscale.. Source: about 2 years ago
  • I uninstalled tailscale, now nas unhappy
    Initially I thought you were being funny, and was going to make a joke about an itchy scalp; until I bing'd and found https://github.com/juanfont/headscale. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Simulating Private LAN without internet access through Tailscale?
    Would this not be a perfect usecase for https://github.com/juanfont/headscale ? Source: over 2 years ago
  • Netmaker vs Headscale for Mesh VPN?
    I've personally only used Netmaker, so I can't speak to the specific features and performance of Headscale. However, I've had mostly a positive experience with Netmaker so far. It's been mostly reliable and easy to use, and but sometimes its been hard to know why some things are not working. Source: over 2 years ago
  • docker static routes (traefik -> ip whitelist -> wireguard)
    No that was not the problem. I also added it manually and checked everything. I have now built an intermediate solution based on https://gist.github.com/qdm12/4e0e4f9d1a34db9cf63ebb0997827d0d But in the future I'll have a look at https://github.com/juanfont/headscale (apparently a more or less official tailscale solution). Source: over 2 years ago
  • Seeking Advice on SD-WAN Type Services for Connecting Multiple Locations
    Among these options, I am particularly drawn to the concept of being able to self-host the controller component in the cloud, as offered by NetMaker, OpenZiti, Nebula, and Headscale. However, I'm open to exploring other alternatives that meet my requirements. Source: over 2 years ago
  • IDS recomendations?
    This is the kind of thing that Fail2Ban is designed to handle. I'd start there, and then look into tailscale / headscale and lastly it's always a good idea to put /var/log on its own partition so it can only eat up so much space. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Wireguard vs Tailscale vs OpenVPN?
    There's also [headscale](https://github.com/juanfont/headscale) which is an OS self-hosted version of Tailscale if you're worried about trust. Source: over 2 years ago
  • FAQ: Common misconceptions about port forwarding, and how does it affect you
    Q: What are the free alternatives to Cloudflare Argo Tunnel? A: Ngrok, Headscale. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Self-hosted Tailscale alternative?
    Yep, it's even mentioned in the Tailscale docs. Headscale reimplements the proprietary control server that helps Tailscale nodes talk to each other. The official Tailscale client is open source. Source: over 2 years ago

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Is Headscale good? This is an informative page that will help you find out. Moreover, you can review and discuss Headscale here. The primary details have not been verified within the last quarter, and they might be outdated. If you think we are missing something, please use the means on this page to comment or suggest changes. All reviews and comments are highly encouranged and appreciated as they help everyone in the community to make an informed choice. Please always be kind and objective when evaluating a product and sharing your opinion.