head to head · open source
Tailscale vs Tirreno
Tailscale has 38,534 GitHub stars, 3,411 forks, 4,569 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Tirreno has 1,561 stars, 185 forks, 9 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. Tailscale leads on adoption by 2,369% (38,534 vs 1,561 stars). Tailscale is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause; Tirreno is written in PHP under AGPL-3.0. Tailscale has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Tirreno 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 | Tirreno | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 185 |
| 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 Tirreno if
- You want the Tirreno feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and Tirreno 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 Tirreno
tirreno tirreno is a security framework. tirreno [tir.ˈrɛ.no] helps understand, monitor, and protect your product from threats, fraud, and abuse. While classic cybersecurity focuses on infrastructure and network perimeter, most breaches occur through compromised accounts and application logic abuse that bypasses firewalls, SIEM, WAFs, and other defenses. tirreno detects threats where they actually happen: inside your product. tirreno is a hand written, few dependency, "low tech" PHP/PostgreSQL application. After a straightforward five minute installation, you can ingest events through API calls and immediately…
read the full Tirreno overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Tailscale or Tirreno more popular?
Tailscale has 38,534 GitHub stars and Tirreno has 1,561. Tailscale has the larger community by that measure.
Are Tailscale and Tirreno free?
Both are open source. Tailscale is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and Tirreno under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Tailscale and Tirreno?
Tailscale is written in Go and Tirreno in PHP. 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 Tirreno?
Choose Tailscale if you want the larger community (38,534 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose Tirreno if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.