head to head · open source
Tailscale vs Tirreno
Tailscale has 36,587 GitHub stars, 3,218 forks, 4,569 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Tirreno has 1,513 stars, 179 forks, 9 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. Tailscale leads on adoption by 2,318% (36,587 vs 1,513 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 | ★ 37K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 179 |
| 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 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 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 Tirreno
Tirreno is an open source security framework written in PHP and backed by PostgreSQL under AGPL 3.0. It lives in the application security and fraud prevention ecosystem, where it runs as a self hosted web application. The project describes itself as a few dependency, hand written application that can be installed quickly and used to ingest product events through API calls.
read the full Tirreno overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Tailscale or Tirreno more popular?
Tailscale has 36,587 GitHub stars and Tirreno has 1,513. 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 (36,587 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.