Managed Nebula vs Tailscale

Managed Nebula and Tailscale are both overlay networking tools that create encrypted mesh networks between your hosts. They share a common goal of simplifying secure connectivity, but we think the approaches differ in ways that matter.

Nebula is a fully open-source overlay networking tool that we originally built at Slack and continue to maintain at Defined Networking. It uses its own protocol built on the Noise framework to create peer-to-peer encrypted tunnels between hosts. Managed Nebula is our cloud-hosted management layer that handles certificate authorities, host configuration, and distribution, while you retain full control of your network’s data plane.

Tailscale is built on top of WireGuard and uses a proprietary centralized coordination server to distribute keys and manage configuration across your network.

Below, we break down the key differences to help you decide which is right for your network.

	Managed Nebula	Tailscale
Protocol	Nebula (Noise IX)	WireGuard (Noise IK)
Architecture	Fully peer-to-peer mesh	Centralized coordination
Authentication	Certificate-based (Nebula CA)	Identity provider-based
Firewall	Stateful with security groups	Centralized ACLs
NAT traversal	Lighthouses + relays	DERP (TCP), peer relays (UDP)
Open source	MIT; control plane proprietary	Client only; server closed
Infrastructure	We run or you do	DERP theirs; peer relays yours
Free tier	100 hosts, SSO included	6 users, 50 tagged devices
Pricing	$1/host/month	Per-user

Both Nebula and Tailscale create mesh networks where hosts communicate directly with each other, rather than routing all traffic through a central gateway. The key difference is how they coordinate that mesh.

Nebula uses its own protocol built on the Noise IX handshake pattern. Every host holds a signed certificate from a Nebula Certificate Authority, and hosts can establish direct tunnels to any other host on the network without needing a central server to authorize or distribute keys for the connection. The data plane is fully decentralized. If our control plane goes offline, your existing network continues operating normally. While you cannot add new hosts, existing hosts will already have their certificates and can establish new tunnels with each other.

Tailscale is built on top of WireGuard, using the Noise IK handshake. It adds a centralized coordination server that distributes public keys and network configuration to all hosts, and performs host discovery. While the actual data traffic flows peer-to-peer when possible, the coordination server is involved in host discovery, key exchange and configuration updates. If the coordination server is unavailable, existing connections will continue to work, but hosts will be unable to learn new network addresses for their peers as they roam. When cached results go stale, new connections may fail to establish.

For a deeper comparison of how Nebula’s protocol compares to WireGuard, see our blog post on comparing Nebula and WireGuard. For an introduction to how mesh networks differ from traditional VPNs, see VPNs vs. mesh networks.

Nebula uses certificate-based authentication with its own simplified certificate format. Each host receives a certificate signed by a Nebula Certificate Authority that contains the host’s public key, Nebula IP address, name, and group memberships. When two hosts connect, they mutually validate each other’s certificates against the trusted CA.

This means adding a new host to a Nebula network only requires signing a new certificate. Existing hosts do not need to be reconfigured. They already trust the CA and will accept any validly signed certificate. Managed Nebula handles the CA and certificate lifecycle for you, and we support single sign-on (SSO) on all plans, including the free tier.

Tailscale relies on third-party identity providers (Google, Microsoft, Okta, etc.) for user authentication, with keys distributed through the centralized coordination server. This provides a familiar login experience but requires a dependency on both the identity provider and Tailscale’s coordination infrastructure for authentication to work.

Nebula has a stateful packet firewall built directly into the Nebula process. Because Nebula certificates include group membership information, firewall rules can reference groups rather than individual IP addresses. This works similarly to AWS Security Groups. Rules like “allow the WebApp group to access port 5432” don’t need to be updated as hosts join or leave the network:

firewall:
  inbound:
    - port: 5432
      proto: tcp
      groups:
        - WebApp

    - port: 22
      proto: tcp
      groups:
        - Admin

Tailscale manages access control through ACLs defined in their centralized control plane. Policies are written in a JSON-based format and configured through the admin console or API. When a new host is added to the network or has its tags changed, its identity must be distributed to all hosts whose ACL references that tag.

Both Nebula and Tailscale implement stateful packet filtering, which is a meaningful security advantage over other mesh networking tools that lack fine-grained access control.

Getting two hosts behind NAT to talk directly to each other is one of the harder problems in networking. Both tools solve it, but in different ways.

Nebula uses discovery nodes called lighthouses to coordinate peer discovery. When a Nebula host starts up, it registers its known IP addresses with the lighthouses. When another host wants to connect, it queries the lighthouses for the target’s addresses, and both hosts actively attempt to establish a direct connection through NAT hole-punching. For difficult NAT situations where direct connections cannot be established, Nebula also supports relays. We run both for you on day one, but make it easy to self-host if you prefer your network traffic stay within your own servers.

Tailscale also attempts NAT traversal, with two fallback relay mechanisms. DERP (Designated Encrypted Relay for Packets) servers relay traffic over TCP when direct connections cannot be established. TCP works even where UDP is blocked, but at significantly lower throughput. To address the throughput gap, Tailscale recently introduced peer relays, which run over UDP on devices you host yourself. Custom self-hosted DERP servers are also available, currently in alpha.

Both products offer managed and self-hosted relaying. The difference is throughput: Tailscale’s managed relays (DERP) run over TCP with limited throughput, and their full-speed UDP peer relays must be self-hosted. Managed Nebula’s relays are full-throughput UDP whether we run them or you do.

We maintain an ongoing, public benchmarking effort that compares Nebula against other mesh networking tools including Tailscale, using dedicated hardware and rigorous methodology. Key findings from our benchmarking results:

• Throughput: Nebula, Netmaker, and Tailscale can all saturate a 10 Gbps network in a single direction on modern CPUs. All three are competitive at the top end.
• Memory: Nebula averages approximately 27 MB of memory. Tailscale uses significantly more (ranging from 60 MB to over 250 MB in our testing) with higher variability related to packet processing optimizations.
• Consistency: Nebula’s throughput and resource usage are extremely consistent and predictable. Tailscale shows more variability in both throughput and memory usage.
• CPU efficiency: Tailscale achieves better per-core CPU efficiency on Linux through segmentation offloading, though this shifts some processing burden to the kernel. These optimizations are not available on all platforms.

As we wrote in that post: “There is no single ‘best’ solution.” We publish the full benchmarking methodology, configurations, and raw data publicly.

Nebula is fully open-source under the MIT license. Every component, including the networking protocol, the firewall, and the certificate authority tooling, is available for inspection, modification, and self-hosting. You can run a complete Nebula network with zero dependency on us. Managed Nebula is an optional management layer on top of the fully open-source project.

Tailscale’s client is open-source, but the coordination server (the component that distributes keys and manages configuration) is proprietary. Headscale is a community-maintained open-source reimplementation of the coordination server, but it is not made or supported by Tailscale.

With Nebula, you have full access to and control over every component of your network. There are no proprietary dependencies.

With Managed Nebula you get to choose: the simple reliability of Defined-hosted discovery and relay infrastructure, data sovereignty through running your entire data plane with self-hosted lighthouses and relays, or maximum redundancy enabled by mixing the two approaches. Our lighthouses and relays operate independently of our management service, so if it experiences downtime, your overlay network keeps working. Host your own lighthouse on-premise and you could even keep your network up through an Internet outage.

With Tailscale, who operates your infrastructure depends on the component: the coordination and discovery server is operated only by Tailscale; DERP relays by Tailscale, or yourself in alpha; peer relays only by you. Your ability to add new hosts, update configuration, and relay traffic through difficult NATs depends on Tailscale’s infrastructure being available. Relaying at full speed, without TCP overhead, requires self-hosting a peer relay.

With Nebula, you have the choice to self-host or offload your network infrastructure to us.

Managed Nebula offers simple per-host pricing:

• Free: Up to 100 hosts, 2 routes, SSO, and a simple management UI. No credit card required.
• Pro: $1/host/month with unlimited hosts, up to 100 routes, priority support, and guaranteed uptime
• Enterprise: Custom pricing with a dedicated Slack support channel and network design assistance

See our pricing page for full details, or contact sales for Enterprise.

Tailscale charges $8-18/month per user (with unlimited endpoint devices) and $1/month for tagged devices (e.g. servers).

Managed Nebula: 500 hosts × $1 = $500/mo. Tailscale: with 20 users × $8 + 450 servers × $1 = $610/mo (Premium: $810).

Choose Managed Nebula if you want:

• Full control over your network infrastructure, including lighthouses and relays
• A fully open-source foundation with no proprietary dependencies
• Certificate-based authentication that scales without constant reconfiguration
• Built-in, group-based firewall rules that work like AWS Security Groups
• A network that keeps operating when the Internet is down (with an on-prem lighthouse)
• Predictable performance with low memory overhead
• Simple, transparent per-host pricing

Choose Tailscale if you want:

• Tight integration with third-party identity providers for user authentication
• A WireGuard-based solution with a familiar protocol underneath
• Connectivity from networks that block UDP entirely (DERP’s TCP fallback)
• Automatic DNS for your hosts (a 2026 roadmap item at Defined Networking)
• Built-in Kubernetes operator