head to head · open source
Tailscale vs WireGuard
Tailscale has 38,534 GitHub stars, 3,411 forks, 4,569 open issues and last shipped yesterday. WireGuard has 735 stars, 325 forks, 20 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. Tailscale leads on adoption by 5,143% (38,534 vs 735 stars). Tailscale is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause; WireGuard is written in C under GPL-2.0. Tailscale has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, WireGuard 44%. 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 | WireGuard | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 735 |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-05-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 325 |
| 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 WireGuard if
- You want the WireGuard 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 WireGuard 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 WireGuard
wireguard tools — tools for configuring WireGuard This supplies the main userspace tooling for using and configuring WireGuard tunnels, including the wg(8) and wg quick(8) utilities. This project supports Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, macOS, Windows, and Android. More information may be found at WireGuard.com. Building $ cd src $ make There are no dependencies other than a good C compiler and a sane libc. Installing make install This command takes into account several environment variables: PREFIX default: /usr DESTDIR default: BINDIR default: $(PREFIX)/bin LIBDIR default: $(PREFIX)/lib MANDIR default…
read the full WireGuard overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Tailscale or WireGuard more popular?
Tailscale has 38,534 GitHub stars and WireGuard has 735. Tailscale has the larger community by that measure.
Are Tailscale and WireGuard free?
Both are open source. Tailscale is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and WireGuard under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Tailscale and WireGuard?
Tailscale is written in Go and WireGuard 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 WireGuard?
Choose Tailscale if you want the larger community (38,534 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose WireGuard if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.