Chisel vs Nebula
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted remote access & vpn options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Not the right match-up?
Chisel
Fast TCP/UDP tunnel over HTTP secured by SSH
VS
Nebula
Scalable overlay networking tool from Slack
| Feature | Chisel | Nebula |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Remote Access & VPN | Remote Access & VPN |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Language | Go | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | binary, docker | binary, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 16,362 | ★ 17,591 |
| First released | 2015 | 2019 |
| Replaces | ngrok | Tailscale |
Why pick each one
Choose Chisel if…
- Released under the MIT license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Mature project with 16.4k GitHub stars
- Written in Go
Choose Nebula if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Mature project with 17.6k GitHub stars
- Written in Go
- Tiny footprint — runs in 64 MB RAM
Frequently asked questions
Is Chisel or Nebula better?
Neither is universally better. Nebula has the larger community, while Chisel is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Chisel and Nebula free and open-source?
Yes. Chisel is licensed under MIT and Nebula under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Chisel and Nebula with Docker?
Chisel: yes. Nebula: check the project docs for container support.