[opensourcedex]

category

Open Source Network Security Tools

Open source network security tools

projects 8 combined stars ★ 112K refresh nightly
Network Security is one of the most active slices of the open source world — the 7 projects below are ranked by GitHub stars, which makes this page roughly a community-voted shortlist rather than a vendor-curated catalogue. Every card shows the license and the last-commit date, so you can filter out the two failure modes of free software in one glance: restrictive licensing that blocks your use case, and abandonment that leaves you maintaining a fork. When two projects look comparable, prefer the one with more recent activity and the more permissive license (MIT/Apache-2.0 over AGPL) unless copyleft specifically serves your goals. Hover into any project for its full README — the documentation quality is usually the honest tell of engineering quality.

All Network Security tools

Tailscale ★ 38K

Zero-config VPN with WireGuard for secure networking

rank001 licenseBSD-3-Clause written inGo typeNetwork Security
Netbird ★ 31K

Zero Trust networking with WireGuard-based secure connectivity

rank002 licenseNOASSERTION written inGo typeNetwork Security
Pangolin ★ 23K

Zero trust network access that's better than VPN

rank003 licenseNOASSERTION written inTypeScript typeNetwork Security
FireZone ★ 9.2K

Fast, flexible VPN replacement with zero-trust security

rank004 licenseApache-2.0 written inElixir typeNetwork Security
suricata ★ 6.8K

Suricata is a network Intrusion Detection System, Intrusion Prevention System and Network Security Monitoring engine developed by the OISF and the Suricata comm

rank005 licenseGPL-2.0 written inC typeNetwork Security
Defguard ★ 2.9K

Zero-Trust VPN with built-in 2FA/MFA and SSO capabilities

rank006 licenseNOASSERTION written inRust typeNetwork Security
WireGuard ★ 735

Fast, minimal VPN built on modern cryptography

rank007 licenseGPL-2.0 written inC typeNetwork Security
Werbot ★ 169

Secure, scalable server access management for DevOps

rank008 licenseNOASSERTION written inGo typeNetwork Security

Frequently asked questions

How many open source Network Security tools are there?

This registry tracks 8 open source Network Security projects, with 112,086 combined GitHub stars. The list is ranked by stars and refreshed nightly.

What is the most popular open source Network Security project?

Tailscale leads this category with 38,497 GitHub stars, followed by Netbird.

Are these Network Security tools free?

Yes — every project listed here is open source. Some also offer paid hosted versions alongside the free self-hosted option; the licence for each project is shown on its card.