Headscale — Self-Hosted Tailscale

Run your own coordination server

Headscale is an open-source, self-hosted re-implementation of Tailscale's coordination server. The same Tailscale clients connect to it instead of Tailscale's hosted control plane. You get the WireGuard mesh, MagicDNS, ACLs — minus dependence on Tailscale Inc.

When self-hosting actually makes sense

You truly need to control the metadata — compliance regimes that require all coordination data stay in-house.
Cost at scale — paid Tailscale tiers above 100 devices add up; Headscale on a $5 VPS is cheaper for very large fleets.
You enjoy maintaining infrastructure and treat the homelab as a hobby in itself.

Honest trade-offs

You give up a lot for that control: no admin console, no native iOS/Android beyond what the Tailscale apps provide via custom login server, slower feature parity, you maintain the server's uptime. For a personal fleet under 100 devices, hosted Tailscale is almost always the right choice — even if you philosophically prefer self-hosting.

Code

Headscale at a glance·bash

# Install on a Linux server (see GitHub releases)
# https://github.com/juanfont/headscale

# Server setup (very abbreviated):
# 1. Configure /etc/headscale/config.yaml
# 2. Start the service
sudo systemctl enable --now headscale

# 3. Create a user, generate a pre-auth key
sudo headscale users create you_username
sudo headscale --user you_username preauthkeys create --reusable

# On client machines, use Tailscale CLI but point at your server:
sudo tailscale up \
    --login-server https://headscale.example.com \
    --auth-key=tskey-...

# After that, all Tailscale CLI commands work as normal

Headscale — Self-Hosted Tailscale

Run your own coordination server

When self-hosting actually makes sense

Honest trade-offs

Code

External links

Exercise

Progress

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