SHSelfHostIndex

GOST vs NetBird

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?
GO GOST Versatile secure tunneling and proxy toolkit VS NE NetBird Connect devices into a secure WireGuard-based overlay network
FeatureGOSTNetBird
CategoryRemote Access & VPNRemote Access & VPN
LicenseMITBSD-3-Clause
LanguageGoGo
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM64 MB256 MB
Deploymentbinary, dockerdocker, kubernetes, binary
GitHub stars★ 7,255★ 28,139
First released20172021
ReplacesChisel, ngrokTailscale, ZeroTier

Why pick each one

Choose GOST if…

  • Released under the MIT license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Mature project with 7.3k GitHub stars
  • Written in Go
GOST details

Choose NetBird if…

  • Released under the BSD-3-Clause license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Kubernetes-ready with Helm charts available
  • Mature project with 28.1k GitHub stars
NetBird details

Frequently asked questions

Is GOST or NetBird better?

Neither is universally better. NetBird has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are GOST and NetBird free and open-source?

Yes. GOST is licensed under MIT and NetBird under BSD-3-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run GOST and NetBird with Docker?

GOST: yes. NetBird: yes.

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