innernet 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.
| Feature | innernet | Nebula |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Read-the-docs project | Read-the-docs project |
| Health score | 87 · Excellent | 95 · Excellent |
| Category | Remote Access & VPN | Remote Access & VPN |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Language | Rust | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | binary, bare-metal | binary, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 5,553 | ★ 18,381 |
| First released | 2021 | 2019 |
| Replaces | Tailscale | Tailscale |
What are innernet and Nebula?
innernet
innernet is a private mesh network system built on WireGuard with a focus on simplicity and security. It uses a server to coordinate peers organized into networks and CIDRs.
- WireGuard-based mesh
- CIDR-organized peers
- Simple coordination server
- Lightweight Rust implementation
Nebula
Nebula is an open-source overlay networking tool built for scalability and security, originally created at Slack. It uses a certificate-based model to connect hosts across the internet.
- Certificate-based identity
- Scales to large fleets
- Built-in firewall rules
- Cross-platform binaries
innernet vs Nebula: key differences
Innernet is written in Rust, while Nebula is built with Go. Nebula is the more established project (first released 2019), while innernet arrived in 2021. Nebula has the considerably larger community, at 18,381 GitHub stars versus 5,553.
Why pick each one
Choose innernet if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Mature project with 5.6k GitHub stars
- Written in Rust
- Tiny footprint — runs in 64 MB RAM
Choose Nebula if…
- Proven at Slack scale
- Lightweight and fast
- Fine-grained host firewalling
Watch out for
- Manual certificate management
- No management GUI
Frequently asked questions
Is innernet or Nebula better?
Neither is universally better. Nebula has the larger community; both share a hard setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are innernet and Nebula free and open-source?
Yes. innernet is licensed under MIT and Nebula under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run innernet and Nebula with Docker?
innernet: check the project docs for container support. Nebula: check the project docs for container support.