Productivity & Business · Security, Privacy & Backup

Tailscale

Tailscale is a WireGuard-based mesh VPN; Personal is free for up to 6 users, Standard is $8 and Premium $18 per user per month, Enterprise by quote.

Our take: Tailscale spells out its plans, limits and seat-billing rules in detail, and its free Personal plan covers up to 6 users with unlimited devices for non-commercial use.

Best forMesh VPN for devices, teams

ReviewedNov 2026Freemium

8.25 criteria · see breakdown

Try Tailscale$0 (Personal); $8/user/mo (Standard)

Tailscale is a WireGuard-based mesh VPN and identity-based connectivity platform that links your devices into a private network called a tailnet, without port forwarding. Its pricing page lists a free Personal plan (up to 6 users, unlimited user devices, non-commercial use), Standard at $8 and Premium at $18 per user per month, and Enterprise by quote (tailscale.com, read 5 November 2026). Prices appear as $ with no currency code on that page; Tailscale's Terms of Service define '$' as United States currency.

The bottom line

Free for up to 6 users on Personal (non-commercial); Standard $8 and Premium $18 per user per month in USD; Enterprise by quote.

Our score

Reviewed by the Conversion Gems editorial team. Hover a facet to focus it; click to pin.Tap a facet to focus it.

What it is, and why we rate it

One line each. Open a row for detail.

What it really isA WireGuard-based mesh VPN and identity-based connectivity platform from Tailscale that links devices into a private network called a tailnet, with a free Personal plan and per-user paid plans.

Our takeTailscale spells out its plans, limits and seat-billing rules in detail, and its free Personal plan covers up to 6 users with unlimited devices for non-commercial use.

The catches are that business use needs a paid plan or trial, the service depends on Tailscale's hosted coordination server, and its pages differ on the trial.

Why we rate itA free plan with real capacity, published per-user prices and detailed billing rules, held back by non-commercial limits on Personal and a trial described two ways.

The catchPersonal is non-commercial only, billing counts vacant seats, Tailscale's own comparison page says using Tailscale adds a dependency on Tailscale's security, and the trial is described as 14 days of Enterprise in one place and seven days of Premium in another.

Best / not good for

Best for

Individuals and homelab users who want private access to their own devices
Developer and IT teams that want identity-based access to servers and Kubernetes
Small teams that want published per-user pricing

Not good for

Commercial use on the free Personal plan, which Tailscale says is non-commercial only
Buyers who want to host the coordination server themselves under Tailscale's supported product
Anyone who wants a consumer VPN that hides browsing behind a provider's servers by default

Trade-offs

Friction report

Trade-offs to know before signing up.

Time to value
Tailscale says you can deploy a tailnet in minutes: create an account, install the client and log into two or more devices.
Scale breakpoint
Personal stops at 6 users and 3 ACL groups; Standard allows unlimited users and 10 ACL groups; Premium raises ACL groups to 300; Enterprise is custom.
Walled garden
Coordination runs through Tailscale's hosted service, which Tailscale's own comparison says adds a dependency; Headscale is a separate community project outside the supported product.

Still a fit?

If none of these block you, start on the free plan.

Try Tailscale

Tailscale plans on tailscale.com (dollars per user per month)

Plan	Price	Limits and inclusions the pricing page lists
Personal	$0, free forever	Up to 6 users, unlimited user devices, up to 3 ACL groups, up to 50 tagged resources to start, 1,000 minutes a month for ephemeral resources; non-commercial use per the FAQ
Standard	$8 per user per month	Everything in Personal plus unlimited users, SCIM, up to 10 ACL groups, configuring Tailscale with MDM tools, device posture integrations with MDM, EDR and XDR, and advanced user roles
Premium	$18 per user per month	Everything in Standard plus up to 300 ACL groups, 10,000 minutes a month for ephemeral resources, just-in-time access, advanced Tailscale SSH, network flow logs, log streaming, and regional routing and traffic steering
Enterprise	Custom: contact sales	Everything in Premium plus custom device quantities and limits, solutions engineer consultation, a custom MSA, custom tailnet subdomains and pay by invoice

From Tailscale's pricing page (tailscale.com/pricing), checked 5 November 2026. The page shows $ with no currency code; Tailscale's Terms of Service (last updated 25 August 2026) define '$' as United States currency. Prices are per user per month; the FAQ says seats are billed at the start of the month, changes to an annual subscription plan go through Tailscale's sales team, Enterprise customers can pay by annual invoice, and the page lists no separate annual price. Add-ons listed: Mullvad at $5 per month for every 5 devices, and extra tagged resources at $1 per month each beyond the 50 included.

Terms Tailscale uses, as its own pages define them

Term	What Tailscale's pages say	Where
Tailnet	Tailscale's name for your private peer-to-peer mesh network of connected devices	What is Tailscale? (docs)
Exit node	A device that routes your public internet traffic when you choose it; available on all plans	Exit nodes (docs)
DERP relay	A server that helps establish connections and, as a fallback, relays traffic that is already encrypted and that it cannot decrypt	DERP servers (docs)
Tagged resource	A device owned by a tag rather than a user, such as a server or subnet router; 50 are included and more cost $1 a month each	Pricing page FAQ
Ephemeral resource	A short-running tagged device, such as a Kubernetes pod or CI/CD runner, counted from a monthly pool of minutes	Pricing page FAQ
Seat	A place for one user on a tailnet; a user occupies a seat on first login to the admin console or first device authentication, and vacant seats are still billed	Pricing page FAQ
Headscale	A separate, community-maintained open-source implementation of the coordination server, not part of the supported Tailscale product	Open source at Tailscale

Definitions paraphrased from Tailscale's docs and pricing FAQ, read 5 November 2026.

Who makes Tailscale

Tailscale's Terms of Service (last updated 25 August 2026) name two contracting entities. Customer accounts that existed on 2 September 2024 contract with Tailscale Inc., a Canadian business corporation with a registered address in Toronto, and new customer accounts from 3 September 2024 contract with Tailscale US Inc., a Delaware corporation with a registered address in San Francisco.

Plan names have changed. Tailscale's pricing FAQ describes the former Personal Plus, Personal Pro, Starter, Team and Business plans as legacy plans, says the new Personal plan allows 6 users instead of 3, and says accounts on some legacy plans can stay on them for now, so older write-ups may quote different plans.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is Tailscale different from a VPN?

Tailscale is a mesh VPN: devices connect directly to each other instead of through one central VPN server, and Tailscale's hosted coordination server distributes public keys and settings. Tailscale's docs say it creates a peer-to-peer mesh network (a tailnet) and that you can still use it like a traditional VPN by routing all traffic through an exit node. By default it routes only traffic between devices running Tailscale and leaves public internet traffic alone, so it does not hide your IP address unless you use an exit node. With an exit node, the exit node's public address displays instead of your device's (Tailscale docs, read 5 November 2026).

Is Tailscale free?

Yes, the Personal plan is free forever for up to 6 users with unlimited user devices, but Tailscale says it is only suitable for non-commercial use. It also includes up to 3 ACL groups, up to 50 tagged resources to start and 1,000 minutes a month for ephemeral resources. A tailnet created with a custom domain is treated as business use and starts with a 14-day Enterprise trial, while the pricing page's search description mentions seven days of Premium; Tailscale's pages do not reconcile the two (checked 5 November 2026).

What do Tailscale's paid plans cost?

Standard is $8 and Premium is $18 per user per month, Personal is $0 and Enterprise is custom-priced through sales. The pricing page gives $ without a currency code, and Tailscale's Terms of Service define '$' as United States currency. Seats are billed at the start of the month, adding a seat mid-month is prorated, and you are charged for vacant seats until you remove them; changes to an annual subscription plan go through Tailscale's sales team, Enterprise customers can pay by annual invoice, and the page lists no separate annual price. Add-ons listed are Mullvad at $5 a month for every 5 devices and extra tagged resources at $1 a month each beyond the 50 included (checked 5 November 2026).

Does Tailscale track you?

Tailscale says it cannot see the contents of your traffic, but it does collect device metadata. Its privacy policy (effective 25 August 2026) lists the device name, operating system type, host name, IP address, public key, user agent, language settings, access times, connection logs with data statistics called Inter-Node Traffic Logs, and the client version, and says Tailscale does not process or have the ability to access the content of user traffic, which is end-to-end encrypted. The policy describes Aperture and PAM separately, and Tailscale's DERP docs say a relay server forwards already-encrypted traffic that it cannot decrypt.

What is Headscale, and is it Tailscale?

Headscale is a separate open-source project, not Tailscale: Tailscale's open source page calls it an open-source implementation of Tailscale's coordination server, developed independently and separately from Tailscale. Tailscale says Headscale is community-maintained and not part of the supported Tailscale product, and that it is for users who want to run and maintain their own control plane. The same page discloses that a person who develops Headscale works at Tailscale, which supports his efforts.

How do I log in to Tailscale?

Conversion Gems is a review site and cannot sign anyone in. Tailscale's Login link opens https://login.tailscale.com/welcome and its Get started link opens https://login.tailscale.com/start. Per Tailscale, you sign in with your identity provider, such as Google, Microsoft Entra ID, Okta or another OIDC provider; its sign-in page, read on 5 November 2026, also offers Apple, GitHub and passkey options.

Tailscale alternatives

Other private-access and VPN tools from our reviews, each with its own pricing. None is a close mesh-VPN match, and each does a somewhat different job: