NetBox vs Tailscale
NetBox
netboxlabs.com
Tailscale
tailscale.comSide by side
| Figure | NetBox | Tailscale |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $1/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | — | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 8 |
| Spec score · Cloud Network Management Software | 8.3 (#3) | 8.7 (#1) |
| Company | NetBox Labs describes itself as the commercial steward of the open source NetBox project. | Tailscale identifies itself as Tailscale Inc.; the company page describes connecting coworkers, company databases, and family members as use cases. |
| Company facts | LinkedIn lists NetBox Labs as privately held, founded in 2023, headquartered in New York City, and employing 51–200 people. | LinkedIn lists Tailscale as a privately held software-development company founded in 2019, headquartered in Toronto, with 201–500 employees. |
| Company legal name | Crunchbase identifies the company as NetBox Labs, Inc. | The maker identifies itself as Tailscale Inc. |
| Documentation depth | The documentation is organized into installation, configuration, customization, best practices, integrations, plugins, administration, models, reference, development, and release notes. | The documentation includes technical references for ACL policy syntax, CLI, API, OAuth clients and tsnet plus production, security and integration guides. |
| Founded | 2015 | 2019 |
| Integrations | The integrations catalog lists connectors and plugins including Jira Assets, ServiceNow, Arista CloudVision, Proxmox, and SIEM event streams. | Official integration documentation covers cloud servers, containers and virtual machines, serverless apps, databases, code environments, firewalls, web servers, NAS devices and MDM. |
| Notable release | NetBox v4.7, released in September 2026, added cooling infrastructure modeling, channelized subinterfaces, multi-protocol services, module bay types, and background REST processing. | The changelog records Tailscale v1.102.3 on August 19, 2026, including a fix for host-scoped IPv4 destinations and improvements to MagicDNS and Tailnet Lock startup. |
| Rating on G2 | 3.6 out of 5 from 5 reviews | 4.6 out of 5 from 31 reviews |
| Self-hosting | Community NetBox can be installed from a release archive, Git checkout, or experimental Python package with PostgreSQL, Redis, and an application server. | Users can run the independent Headscale open-source coordination server or self-host DERP relays, but Headscale is community-maintained and outside Tailscale support. |
| Support | NetBox Enterprise subscriptions include 24/7 expert assistance and access to NetBox training. | Tailscale provides documentation, a support request form, community channels, and plan-dependent support levels; Premium lists priority support. |
| What it does | NetBox is positioned as a central source of truth for understanding, operating, automating, and securing network and infrastructure environments. | Tailscale is an identity-based secure-connectivity platform built on WireGuard that links teams, clouds, CI/CD, IoT, Kubernetes, AI workloads and personal devices. |
Plans
NetBox
- NetBox Cloud Free PlanFree
- NetBox EnterprisePriced on request
- PremiumPriced on request
- ProfessionalPriced on request
- StarterPriced on request
Tailscale
- PersonalFree
- Standard$8 a month
- Premium$18 a month
- Additional tagged resources$1 a month
- Add more tagged resources$1 a month
- Mullvad$5 a month
- Mullvad add-on$5 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
NetBox
NetBox is a network and infrastructure platform that keeps physical components, virtual assets, IPs, and VLANs in a shared source of truth. Its stated uses include data center infrastructure management, IP address management, network automation, and network source-of-truth work. Every action is recorded in an audit log. Teams can use the hosted SaaS edition, deploy NetBox in their own infrastructure, or use the open-source community offering. NetBox Labs describes itself as the commercial steward of the open-source project. Hosted plans are positioned for different scales and needs: Starter for infrastructure with hundreds of devices, Professional for infrastructure at scale and automation, and Premium for scaled environments requiring advanced security, compliance, and deployment options. NetBox Enterprise is self-managed, with an air-gap edition available. Enterprise subscriptions include 24/7 expert assistance and training. Named integrations include ServiceNow, Splunk, Ansible, Itential, Gluware, and VMware. NetBox Cloud offers SSO integrations with Azure, Okta, and Google. Prices for the named plans are not displayed; the pricing page directs prospective customers to sales.
Tailscale
Tailscale is a zero-config VPN for connecting users and devices across a network. It uses WireGuard to form low-latency peer-to-peer connections, which Tailscale says are end-to-end encrypted so it cannot read users’ traffic. Administrators can use access control lists to specify which users may connect to which devices. Supported identity providers handle authentication, and SCIM supports user and group provisioning. Monitoring features include configuration audit logs, network flow logs, webhooks, and log streaming to SIEM partners. Device posture information can be used in connectivity rules. Taildrop transfers files between devices, while node sharing lets users share a node without exposing it to the public internet. The service runs on Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, web, and Windows. Personal is free forever for non-commercial use and supports up to six users; Standard costs $8 per user per month. Premium costs $18 per user per month and includes priority support.