Tailscale

Tailscale makes identity-based networking software. Instead of routing traffic through a central VPN gateway, it builds a private mesh network, called a tailnet, between a customer's devices, servers, cloud workloads and other resources, and uses the customer's identity provider to decide who can reach what. The company is built on WireGuard, specifically wireguard-go, upstreams changes to it and donates to the project. Tailscale is open source at its core and free for open-source projects.

What it does

The main uses the company lists are a business VPN replacement for remote access to internal apps and data, privileged access to SSH, Kubernetes, databases and other infrastructure without bastion hosts, zero trust networking with least-privilege access rules, and connectivity for CI/CD runners, edge and IoT devices, and multi-cloud environments. Kubernetes networking and secure SaaS access are listed as solutions. A newer product, Aperture, governs AI usage for agents and users. The company says its approach removes the need to manage a public key infrastructure at scale and that setup takes minutes.

Tailscale describes itself as a fully remote company and says it prefers small teams and software that just works.

Who it serves

The site addresses individuals who want to connect their own devices, engineering and IT teams at businesses of any size, and enterprises replacing legacy VPN, SASE and privileged access tools. It states that 50,000 businesses choose Tailscale and publishes customer stories, including Instacart.

Key facts

Legal entities: Tailscale Inc., a Canadian corporation with a registered address in Toronto (existing accounts to September 2024); Tailscale US Inc., a Delaware corporation with a registered address in San Francisco (new accounts from 3 September 2024) Working model: fully remote Personal plan: free, up to 6 users, for non-commercial use Standard plan: $8 per user per month Premium plan: $18 per user per month Enterprise plan: custom pricing Add-ons: $1 per month per tagged resource beyond the 50 included Trial: a tailnet created with a custom domain starts with a 14-day Enterprise trial