head to head · open source
Tailscale vs suricata
Tailscale has 38,534 GitHub stars, 3,411 forks, 4,569 open issues and last shipped yesterday. suricata has 6,812 stars, 1,783 forks, 86 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Tailscale leads on adoption by 466% (38,534 vs 6,812 stars). Tailscale is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause; suricata is written in C under GPL-2.0. Tailscale has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, suricata 26%. Tailscale was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Tailscale | suricata | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 6.8K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 1.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Tailscale if
- You weight community size — 39K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick suricata if
- You want the suricata feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and suricata fits your workflow better
About Tailscale
Tailscale Private WireGuard® networks made easy Overview This repository contains the majority of Tailscale's open source code. Notably, it includes the tailscaled daemon and the tailscale CLI tool. The tailscaled daemon runs on Linux, Windows, macOS, and to varying degrees on FreeBSD and OpenBSD. The Tailscale iOS and Android apps use this repo's code, but this repo doesn't contain the mobile GUI code. Other Tailscale repos of note: the Android app is at the Synology package is at the QNAP package is at the Chocolatey packaging is at For background on which parts of Tailscale are open source and why, see Using…
read the full Tailscale overview →
About suricata
Suricata Introduction Suricata is a network IDS, IPS and NSM engine developed by the OISF and the Suricata community. Resources Home Page Bug Tracker User Guide Dev Guide Installation Guide User Support Forum Contributing We're happily taking patches and other contributions. Please see our Contribution Process for how to get started. Suricata is a complex piece of software dealing with mostly untrusted input. Mishandling this input will have serious consequences: in IPS mode a crash may knock a network offline in passive mode a compromise of the IDS may lead to loss of critical and confidential data missed…
read the full suricata overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Tailscale or suricata more popular?
Tailscale has 38,534 GitHub stars and suricata has 6,812. Tailscale has the larger community by that measure.
Are Tailscale and suricata free?
Both are open source. Tailscale is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and suricata under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Tailscale and suricata?
Tailscale is written in Go and suricata in C. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Tailscale or suricata?
Choose Tailscale if you want the larger community (38,534 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose suricata if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.