Security & Compliance
VPN & Network Security
VPNs, tunnels, zero-trust networking, and secure access tools.
Best VPN & Network Security tools by public signals
These picks are computed from scored public evidence. Use the openness column in the ranking to separate OSI-approved, source-available, open-core, proprietary, and unverified-license tools.
Use Case Rankings
Ordered by ToolVitals score, health, shipping, confidence, and then adoption as a tie-breaker.
| # | Tool | Health | Shipping | Openness | Stars | Score | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Tailscale Zero-config VPN built on WireGuard | 96 | 100 | OSI-approved OSS | 32.5k | 98 | Active |
| 02 | Pangolin Identity-aware VPN and tunneled reverse proxy for remote access. | 93 | 98 | OSI-approved OSS | 21.2k | 96 | Active |
| 03 | Firezone Enterprise-ready zero-trust access platform built on WireGuard®. | 92 | 95 | OSI-approved OSS | 8.7k | 95 | Active |
| 04 | Rustunnel Open-source tunnel that scales with you. | 86 | 81 | OSI-approved OSS | 634 | 88 | Active |
| 05 | Zentinel Security-first reverse proxy built to guard the free web. | 83 | 89 | OSI-approved OSS | 80 | 88 | Active |
| 06 | Octelium A next-gen FOSS self-hosted unified zero trust secure access platform that can operate as a remote access VPN, a ZTNA platform, API/AI/MCP gateway, a PaaS, an ngrok-alternative and a homelab infrastructure. | 81 | 88 | OSI-approved OSS | 3.9k | 88 | Active |
| 07 | Headscale An open source, self-hosted implementation of the Tailscale control server | 83 | 87 | OSI-approved OSS | 40k | 87 | Active |
| 08 | zrok Secure internet sharing made simple. | 81 | 84 | OSI-approved OSS | 4.5k | 87 | Active |
| 09 | OnionShare Securely and anonymously share files, host websites, and chat with friends using the Tor network | 81 | 65 | OSI-approved OSS | 7k | 79 | Active |
| 10 | i2pd 🛡 I2P: End-to-End encrypted and anonymous Internet | 79 | 66 | OSI-approved OSS | 4.1k | 78 | Active |
| 11 | BrowserBox 💚 Secure remote browsing anywhere, any way you like it. | 72 | 60 | License unknown | 3.9k | 75 | Warning |
| 12 | Firewalla http://firewalla.com | 72 | 69 | OSI-approved OSS | 611 | 73 | Warning |
| 13 | TrustTunnel Obfuscated VPN protocol and client/server tooling. | 77 | 48 | OSI-approved OSS | 3.3k | 72 | Warning |
| 14 | Cylonix Client app alternative to Tailscale. | 63 | 41 | OSI-approved OSS | 39 | 63 | Warning |
| 15 | fail2ban Daemon to ban hosts that cause multiple authentication errors | 72 | 14 | OSI-approved OSS | 18k | 57 | Warning |
| 16 | Algo VPN Set up a personal VPN in the cloud | 54 | 28 | OSI-approved OSS | 30.3k | 52 | Warning |
| 17 | Tunnelmole Get a Public URL for your local development enviornment | 46 | 7 | OSI-approved OSS | 1.9k | 44 | Critical |
| 18 | Ockam Orchestrate end-to-end encryption, cryptographic identities, mutual authentication, and authorization policies between distributed applications – at massive scale. | 44 | 0 | OSI-approved OSS | 4.6k | 38 | Critical |
| 19 | OmniEdge No-code P2P layer-2 mesh VPN for enterprise with zero config | 33 | 4 | OSI-approved OSS | 893 | 36 | Critical |
| 20 | OpenCloudflareCDN Open-source reverse proxy inspired by Cloudflare with bot-blocking challenges. | 10 | 0 | OSI-approved OSS | 6 | 24 | Critical |
Evidence Watch
Tracked tools with useful public signals but no verdict score yet.