COMPARISON · SELF-HOSTED ALTERNATIVE
Tunnex vs Tailscale
Tailscale is a polished managed mesh VPN built on WireGuard — its coordination plane runs in Tailscale's cloud. Tunnex is a self-hosted Zero Trust VPN: the control plane, gateways, and policy engine run on your infrastructure under an Apache-2.0 open core. This page compares them honestly, including where Tailscale is the better choice.
THE SHORT VERSION
Managed mesh vs. the VPN you own end to end.
CHOOSE TAILSCALE IF
You want zero servers to operate
Tailscale hosts the coordination plane. Sign in, install clients, done — there is nothing to patch or back up.
Your devices sit behind CGNAT
Tailscale relays handle NAT traversal so almost any connection works, anywhere, with no public address.
You need mature first-party mobile apps
Tailscale ships polished apps for iOS, Android, and every desktop platform.
CHOOSE TUNNEX IF
The control plane must be yours
Compliance, data residency, or air-gapped networks: Tunnex runs entirely on infrastructure you own, with offline licence verification.
You want default-deny, port-scoped policy
Nothing is reachable until a rule allows it — scoped by subject, destination, port, and protocol, enforced at the gateway kernel.
AI agents need governed access
Owned non-human principals, MCP server scoping by host and port, time-boxed grants, attributed audit. No comparable concept in Tailscale.
Open source matters
Apache-2.0 core you can read and audit. Enterprise modules are source-available.
SIDE BY SIDE
The details that decide it.
CAPABILITY
Tunnex
SELF-HOSTED · OPEN CORE
Tailscale
Control plane
Fully self-hosted — your VPS or Kubernetes cluster
Hosted SaaS (proprietary); self-hosting requires the community Headscale project
Data plane
WireGuard, plus OpenVPN alongside it from the same console
WireGuard
Policy model
Default-deny compiled policies: subject × destination × port × protocol, kernel-enforced at the gateway
Tailnet ACLs granting coarse access between nodes
Identity & directory sync
OIDC SSO (Google, Entra ID); IdP groups sync directly into policy subjects
SSO sign-in to the tailnet
Device posture
Admin approval gate plus OS and disk-encryption checks (Enterprise)
Posture checks on paid tiers
AI agents & MCP governance
Owned agent principals, port-scoped MCP destinations, expiring grants, attributed audit
Not offered — machines are tagged nodes, not governed principals
Audit trail
Per-rule flow logs plus audit log with system actors and causes
Configuration logging on higher tiers
Multi-tenancy
Multi-tenant from the schema up — isolated orgs on one deployment
One tailnet per account; orgs require separate infrastructure
Behind CGNAT
Gateways need a public address or port forward today; relay fleet is on the roadmap
Works nearly everywhere via relays
Licence
Apache-2.0 core, source-available Enterprise
Proprietary (clients are open source)
STATED PLAINLY
Where Tailscale is the better choice today.
- Zero operational burden: no control plane to run, patch, back up, or monitor. If nobody on your team wants to own a server, Tailscale is the rational answer.
- Connectivity from anywhere: its relay infrastructure gets devices online behind hotel Wi-Fi and CGNAT. Tunnex gateways currently require a public address or port forward — we say this plainly because our own FAQ does too.
- First-party apps on every platform, refined over years. Tunnex ships desktop clients for Windows and macOS and uses the official WireGuard apps on mobile.
- Ecosystem gravity: integrations, documentation, and community answers everywhere you look.
QUESTIONS
Tailscale → Tunnex, answered.
Is Tunnex a good self-hosted Tailscale alternative?+
Yes — with a clear trade. Tunnex gives you what Tailscale cannot: a control plane on your own infrastructure, an Apache-2.0 open core, and a default-deny policy engine with AI agent governance. In exchange, you operate a small Docker stack and gateways need public reachability.
What about Headscale?+
Headscale is an independent, community-run reimplementation of the Tailscale coordination server. It addresses self-hosting the control plane but is a third-party project without official support, and it does not provide a Zero Trust policy engine or AI agent governance.
Does Tunnex work behind CGNAT like Tailscale?+
Not today. Gateways require a public address or a port forward, and we do not operate a relay fleet yet. Relay support is on the published roadmap. End-user devices behind CGNAT connect fine once a gateway is reachable.
Can I keep using the official WireGuard clients?+
Yes. Mobile devices connect through the official WireGuard apps while gateway-side Zero Trust policy still applies. Desktop users get purpose-built Windows and macOS clients with a kernel-level kill-switch.
How hard is migration from Tailscale?+
Both use WireGuard, so keys and subnets map over cleanly. The practical work is translating tailnet ACLs into Tunnex rules — most teams find the port-scoped model stricter than what they had, which is usually the point.
Run the alternative on your own hardware.
One command installs the whole stack. Connect your first device in minutes and keep every packet on infrastructure you own.