head to head · open source
Tailscale vs suricata
Tailscale has 36,628 GitHub stars, 3,221 forks, 4,569 open issues and last shipped yesterday. suricata has 6,646 stars, 1,769 forks, 86 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Tailscale leads on adoption by 451% (36,628 vs 6,646 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 27%. 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 | ★ 37K | ★ 6.6K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 1.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Tailscale if
- You weight community size — 37K 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 is an open source implementation of a zero configuration VPN built on WireGuard, designed to simplify secure network connectivity across devices. It lives in the network security ecosystem and provides private, encrypted networks without manual firewall or IP management. The project delivers both a daemon ( tailscaled ) and CLI tool ( tailscale ) that enable peer to peer connectivity using WireGuard, augmented with identity based access controls and optional cloud managed features.
read the full Tailscale overview →
About suricata
Suricata is a network Intrusion Detection System (IDS), Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and Network Security Monitoring (NSM) engine developed by the OISF and the Suricata community, released under GPL 2.0 and written in C, for security teams that need to detect, block and record activity on the networks they operate.
read the full suricata overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Tailscale or suricata more popular?
Tailscale has 36,628 GitHub stars and suricata has 6,646. 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 (36,628 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.