head to head · open source
Tailscale vs ProjectDiscovery
Tailscale has 38,534 GitHub stars, 3,411 forks, 4,569 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ProjectDiscovery has 32,543 stars, 3,962 forks, 107 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Tailscale leads on adoption by 18% (38,534 vs 32,543 stars). Tailscale is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause; ProjectDiscovery is written in Go under MIT. Tailscale has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, ProjectDiscovery 12%. 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 | ProjectDiscovery | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 33K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 4.0K |
| 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 ProjectDiscovery if
- You want the ProjectDiscovery feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and ProjectDiscovery 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 ProjectDiscovery
English • 中文 • Korean • Indonesia • Spanish • 日本語 • Portuguese • Türkçe Nuclei is a modern, high performance vulnerability scanner that leverages simple YAML based templates. It empowers you to design custom vulnerability detection scenarios that mimic real world conditions, leading to zero false positives. Simple YAML format for creating and customizing vulnerability templates. Contributed by thousands of security professionals to tackle trending vulnerabilities. Reduce false positives by simulating real world steps to verify a vulnerability. Ultra fast parallel scan processing and request clustering. Integrate…
read the full ProjectDiscovery overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Tailscale or ProjectDiscovery more popular?
Tailscale has 38,534 GitHub stars and ProjectDiscovery has 32,543. Tailscale has the larger community by that measure.
Are Tailscale and ProjectDiscovery free?
Both are open source. Tailscale is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and ProjectDiscovery under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Tailscale and ProjectDiscovery?
Tailscale is written in Go and ProjectDiscovery in Go. 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 ProjectDiscovery?
Choose Tailscale if you want the larger community (38,534 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose ProjectDiscovery if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.