Headscale

Headscale is a self-hosted implementation of the Tailscale control server. It lets you run the coordination server for a Tailscale network yourself, instead of relying on the hosted Tailscale service. It is aimed at self-hosters, hobbyists, projects, labs, and small open-source organizations that want to run a single tailnet.

Tailscale builds a WireGuard-based overlay network between your computers using NAT traversal. As the control server, Headscale exchanges WireGuard public keys between nodes, assigns each client an IP address, sets boundaries between users, enables machine sharing between users, and exposes the advertised routes of your nodes. Standard Tailscale clients connect to it.

Headscale is not associated with Tailscale Inc. It implements a deliberately narrow scope: a single tailnet suited to personal use or a small organization. The maintainers do not support or encourage running it behind reverse proxies or in containers.