Headscale 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?
Compare Headscale with
choose an app… RustDesk frp Sunshine Tailscale JumpServer Algo VPN WG-Easy localtunnel Neko Teleport GoTTY Moonlight Nebula ZeroTier Chisel Cockpit Termix OpenVPN Mosh rathole noVNC FreeRDP SoftEther VPN EasyTier ttyd Netmaker Sliver bore Apollo RustDesk Server Docker OpenVPN Firezone sshx Warpgate TigerVNC GOST MeshCentral n2n wstunnel Outline Server Webmin Next Terminal innernet Wetty KasmVNC WebSSH Remotely Pritunl Wirehole Nexterm zrok expose websockify Tactical RMM OpenZiti Webtop WireGuard Apache Guacamole Eternal Terminal pgrok Bastillion Sshwifty Shell In A Box strongSwan Xpra Headplane Defguard WebSSH2 Snowflake SSH Client tinc Games on Whales ShellHub Selkies Aspia tunnelmole ztncui Subspace WireGuard Portal wayvnc PyRDP docker-baseimage-gui trzsz boringproxy SSHPiper Upterm Kasm Workspaces Headscale-Admin Wesher x11vnc Neko Rooms CloudTTY OpenConnect Server Apache Guacamole Lite gTunnel X2Go Guacozy Engity's Bifröst Cardea RPort Neutrinet SparkView
Compare NetBird with
choose an app… RustDesk frp Sunshine Tailscale JumpServer Algo VPN WG-Easy localtunnel Neko Teleport GoTTY Moonlight Nebula ZeroTier Chisel Cockpit Termix OpenVPN Mosh rathole noVNC FreeRDP SoftEther VPN EasyTier ttyd Netmaker Sliver bore Apollo RustDesk Server Docker OpenVPN Firezone sshx Warpgate TigerVNC GOST MeshCentral n2n wstunnel Outline Server Webmin Next Terminal innernet Wetty KasmVNC WebSSH Remotely Pritunl Wirehole Nexterm zrok expose websockify Tactical RMM OpenZiti Webtop WireGuard Apache Guacamole Eternal Terminal pgrok Bastillion Sshwifty Shell In A Box strongSwan Xpra Headplane Defguard WebSSH2 Snowflake SSH Client tinc Games on Whales ShellHub Selkies Aspia tunnelmole ztncui Subspace WireGuard Portal wayvnc PyRDP docker-baseimage-gui trzsz boringproxy SSHPiper Upterm Kasm Workspaces Headscale-Admin Wesher x11vnc Neko Rooms CloudTTY OpenConnect Server Apache Guacamole Lite gTunnel X2Go Guacozy Engity's Bifröst Cardea RPort Neutrinet SparkView
Feature Headscale NetBird Category Remote Access & VPN Remote Access & VPN License BSD-3-Clause BSD-3-Clause Language Go Go Setup difficulty Medium Medium Min. RAM 128 MB 256 MB Deployment docker, binary docker, kubernetes, binary GitHub stars ★ 42,612 ★ 28,139 First released 2020 2021 Replaces Tailscale Tailscale, ZeroTier
Why pick each one
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 Headscale or NetBird better? Neither is universally better. Headscale has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Headscale and NetBird free and open-source? Yes. Headscale is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and NetBird under BSD-3-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Headscale and NetBird with Docker? Headscale: yes. NetBird: yes.