VPN & network security buyers are usually comparing tools that look similar on the surface: VPNs, zero-trust access platforms, reverse proxies, tunnels, and anonymity tools all show up in the same decision set. For June 2026, this section uses the supplied ToolVitals data for open/source-visible VPN & Network Security Tools, including ToolVitals score, health score, shipping score, GitHub stars, status, openness_label, license_label, and pricing_scope.
The ranking is limited to open/source-visible tools and orders them by ToolVitals score first, with GitHub stars used only as a secondary popularity signal when scores are close or tied. That is why Tailscale ranks ahead of Firezone at the same ToolVitals score of 95, and why Headscale ranks ahead of Rustunnel at the same ToolVitals score of 90.
Rankings
| Rank | Tool | Openness | License | Health | Shipping | GitHub Stars | Score | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tailscale | OSI-approved OSS | BSD-3-Clause | 93 | 95 | 32696 | 95 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 2 | Firezone | OSI-approved OSS | Apache-2.0 | 92 | 95 | 8700 | 95 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 3 | Pangolin | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 90 | 95 | 21310 | 94 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 4 | Headscale | OSI-approved OSS | BSD-3-Clause | 86 | 93 | 40242 | 90 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 5 | Rustunnel | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 86 | 89 | 635 | 90 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 6 | Octelium | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 81 | 88 | 3895 | 88 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 7 | OnionShare | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-3.0 | 81 | 78 | 6996 | 83 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 8 | Zentinel | OSI-approved OSS | Apache-2.0 | 79 | 78 | 81 | 83 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 9 | zrok | OSI-approved OSS | Apache-2.0 | 80 | 69 | 4488 | 82 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 10 | i2pd | OSI-approved OSS | BSD-3-Clause | 76 | 77 | 4100 | 80 | 🟢 Excellent |
| 11 | Firewalla | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 72 | 69 | 611 | 75 | 🟢 Good |
| 12 | TrustTunnel | OSI-approved OSS | Apache-2.0 | 77 | 43 | 3330 | 70 | 🟢 Good |
| 13 | fail2ban | OSI-approved OSS | GPL-2.0 | 69 | 28 | 18018 | 60 | 🟢 Good |
| 14 | Cylonix | OSI-approved OSS | BSD-3-Clause | 56 | 36 | 39 | 59 | 🟡 Fair |
| 15 | Algo VPN | OSI-approved OSS | AGPL-3.0 | 54 | 21 | 30285 | 49 | 🟡 Fair |
| 16 | Tunnelmole | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 46 | 7 | 1871 | 44 | 🟡 Fair |
| 17 | Ockam | OSI-approved OSS | Apache-2.0 | 44 | 0 | 4628 | 38 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 18 | OmniEdge | OSI-approved OSS | Apache-2.0 | 33 | 4 | 894 | 36 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
| 19 | OpenCloudflareCDN | OSI-approved OSS | MIT | 28 | 0 | 6 | 32 | 🔴 Needs Attention |
Top 3 Highlights
Tailscale ranks first with a ToolVitals score of 95, health score of 93, and shipping score of 95. Its description is focused and mature: a zero-config VPN built on WireGuard. It is labeled OSI-approved OSS with license_label BSD-3-Clause, and it has 32,696 GitHub stars. The supplied pricing_scope is hosted_cloud, so it stands apart from most of the list, where pricing_scope is marked none.
Firezone is very close to the top, also scoring 95 on ToolVitals with a 92 health score and 95 shipping score. Its description points at enterprise-ready zero-trust access built on WireGuard, which puts it squarely in the VPN and access-control part of the category. It is labeled OSI-approved OSS with license_label Apache-2.0 and has 8,700 GitHub stars.
Pangolin ranks third with a ToolVitals score of 94, a 90 health score, and a 95 shipping score. The supplied description frames it as both an identity-aware VPN and a tunneled reverse proxy for remote access, so it covers more than a classic VPN use case. It is labeled OSI-approved OSS with license_label AGPL-3.0 and has 21,310 GitHub stars.
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