Replace / Tailscale
Replace Tailscale with Headscale / NetBird
The best open-source alternative to Tailscale is Headscale or NetBird, self-hosted on Railway. A mesh VPN you host. Headscale is BSD-3; NetBird is AGPL-3.0 — Tailscale without the coordination seat.
Estimated save $1,200 a year.
Open the stackStart on Railway
How Tailscale compares
| Tailscale | Headscale / NetBird | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Hosted subscription | Open-source or fair-code license; you pay the host |
| Hosting | Vendor cloud | Self-hosted on Railway or any VPS |
| Rough monthly cost | Public list price not verified this run | Hosting only — no SaaS seat meter in this repo |
- Headscale
BSD-3 Tailscale-compatible control server
- NetBird
AGPL-3.0 WireGuard mesh if you want that stack
FAQ
- Is it free?
- The Headscale / NetBird licenses are open source or fair-code. You still pay hosting (Railway or any VPS) and any APIs the stack calls. There is no Tailscale seat or task bill on this path.
- Can I migrate from Tailscale?
- Yes. Start with the workflows or data you actually use, then cut over. The Headscale / NetBird stack page has the agent prompt and the cost table; most teams rebuild the slice that matters and leave old Tailscale links until they expire.
- How do I deploy it?
- Open the Headscale / NetBird stack, copy the agent prompt, and deploy on Railway (one service, PORT, and a volume when the app needs disk). Placeholder: Headscale (or NetBird management) plus a volume for the node database. Clients stay on laptops and servers. No one-click template in this repo yet — Start on Railway. Public tunnels stay on /stacks/frp-tunnel.
- What does this replace?
- Tailscale. The published small-team estimate on this stack is $1,200 a year.
Related pages
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