localtunnel vs Tailscale
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 localtunnel with
choose an app… RustDesk frp Headscale Sunshine NPS JumpServer Algo VPN NetBird WG-Easy 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 frp-panel 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 Tailscale with
choose an app… RustDesk frp Headscale Sunshine JumpServer Algo VPN NetBird WG-Easy 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 localtunnel Tailscale Category Remote Access & VPN Remote Access & VPN License MIT BSD-3-Clause Language JavaScript Go Setup difficulty Easy Easy Min. RAM 128 MB 64 MB Deployment docker, binary binary, bare-metal GitHub stars ★ 22,440 ★ 34,934 First released 2015 2019 Replaces ngrok ZeroTier
Why pick each one
Choose localtunnel if… Released under the MIT license Easy to set up — beginner-friendly First-class Docker support for quick deployment Mature project with 22.4k GitHub stars localtunnel details Choose Tailscale if… Released under the BSD-3-Clause license Easy to set up — beginner-friendly Mature project with 34.9k GitHub stars Written in Go Tailscale details
Frequently asked questions Is localtunnel or Tailscale better? Neither is universally better. Tailscale has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are localtunnel and Tailscale free and open-source? Yes. localtunnel is licensed under MIT and Tailscale under BSD-3-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run localtunnel and Tailscale with Docker? localtunnel: yes. Tailscale: check the project docs for container support.