Nebula vs SoftEther VPN
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?
Nebula
Scalable overlay networking tool from Slack
VS
SoftEther VPN
Multi-protocol VPN server from the University of Tsukuba
| Feature | Nebula | SoftEther VPN |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Remote Access & VPN | Remote Access & VPN |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | C |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | binary, bare-metal | bare-metal, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 17,591 | ★ 13,447 |
| First released | 2019 | 2014 |
| Replaces | Tailscale | Cisco AnyConnect |
Why pick each one
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
Choose SoftEther VPN if…
- Released under the Apache-2.0 license
- Mature project with 13.4k GitHub stars
- Written in C
- Tiny footprint — runs in 256 MB RAM
Frequently asked questions
Is Nebula or SoftEther VPN 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 Nebula and SoftEther VPN free and open-source?
Yes. Nebula is licensed under MIT and SoftEther VPN under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Nebula and SoftEther VPN with Docker?
Nebula: check the project docs for container support. SoftEther VPN: check the project docs for container support.