Best Open Source Alternatives to Zerotier

Compare the best free and open-source alternatives to Zerotier — self-hosted and desktop replacements you fully control, ranked by GitHub stars, license and platform support.

Curated by open-source.store · Updated November 2026 · 3 alternatives

Zerotier

Proprietary SaaS

Zerotier alternatives compared

Open-source alternatives to Zerotier, compared by stars, license and platform
Tool		License	Platforms	Self-hosted
Tailscale	38,574	BSD-3-Clause		No	Nov 2026	Visit
Netbird	30,622	—	DockerLinux	Yes	Nov 2026	Visit
Defguard	2,895	—	DockerLinux	Yes	Nov 2026	Visit

Top open-source Zerotier alternatives

Tailscale38,574BSD-3-Clause

Tailscale creates secure, peer-to-peer WireGuard mesh networks between distributed servers and devices without central gateways or port forwarding.

vs Zerotier: a free, open-source option you fully control, licensed BSD-3-Clause.

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Edgar Sipki

Go & gRPC engineer · founder of EasyP

Promoted

Mentoring for backend developers. Consulting for startups.

Go, gRPC and Protobuf done right, LLM agents in production, and the hard parts of shipping a first product.

GogRPCProtobufLLM agents

sipki.online

Speaker at HighLoad++, GolangConf, AI Conf, DevOpsConf
Helped launch 7+ startups
Maintainer of EasyP, the open-source Protobuf toolkit

Netbird30,622

NetBird is an open-source WireGuard overlay network and ZTNA alternative to ZeroTier and Twingate with peer-to-peer routing and SSO integration.

DockerLinux

vs Zerotier: a free, open-source option you fully control.

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Defguard2,895

Defguard provides self-hosted zero-trust access, replacing cloud IAM and VPNs by uniting WireGuard tunnels with native OpenID Connect SSO and MFA.

DockerLinux

vs Zerotier: a free, open-source option you fully control.

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