tinc vs Wesher
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted remote access & vpn options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | tinc | Wesher |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Read-the-docs project | Read-the-docs project |
| Health score | 76 · Good | 13 · At risk |
| Category | Remote Access & VPN | Remote Access & VPN |
| License | GPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | C | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | binary, source | binary, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 2,248 | ★ 988 |
| First released | 2003 | 2019 |
| Replaces | Hamachi, ZeroTier | Tailscale, ZeroTier |
What are tinc and Wesher?
tinc
tinc is an open-source VPN daemon that uses tunneling and encryption to create a secure private mesh network between hosts. It is fully self-hosted and automatically routes traffic between peers.
- Mesh VPN routing
- Automatic full-mesh peering
- Encrypted tunnels
- Self-hosted daemon
Wesher
Wesher is an open-source tool that creates and manages an encrypted WireGuard mesh overlay network between cluster nodes. It handles key exchange and peer discovery for self-hosted private networking.
- Automatic mesh networking
- Gossip-based discovery
- WireGuard encryption
- Zero central server
tinc vs Wesher: key differences
Tinc is written in C, while Wesher is built with Go. Licensing differs — GPL-2.0 for tinc versus Apache-2.0 for Wesher. Tinc is the more established project (first released 2003), while Wesher arrived in 2019. Tinc has the considerably larger community, at 2,248 GitHub stars versus 988.
Why pick each one
Choose tinc if…
- Released under the GPL-2.0 license
- Active community (2.2k GitHub stars)
- Written in C
- Tiny footprint — runs in 64 MB RAM
Choose Wesher if…
- Released under the Apache-2.0 license
- Written in Go
- Tiny footprint — runs in 64 MB RAM
Frequently asked questions
Is tinc or Wesher better?
Neither is universally better. tinc has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are tinc and Wesher free and open-source?
Yes. tinc is licensed under GPL-2.0 and Wesher under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run tinc and Wesher with Docker?
tinc: check the project docs for container support. Wesher: check the project docs for container support.