tailscale vs cloudflare tunnel? which is better a homelab

AppearanceBoring9229@sh.itjust.works to Selfhosted@lemmy.world – 57 points –

Hello I've been using cloudflare to get remote access for the couple apps I selfhost, but lately I've been hearing about the wonders of tailscale.

It seems that the free tier is enough for my use. Which would be a safe option to have remote access for my 3D printer? Also how are both in terms of privacy?

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Tailscale shouldn't be getting your data anyway. It's a mesh VPN that directly connects devices after their auth server gives out certs and let's clients know where to find another. If you're not comfortable with using their server for this I'd suggest you look into the open source headscale server. I do remember it routing through their server in the rare case NAT punching doesn't work

Thanks for the info. Though I fail to see how it's much different than cloudflare tunnels, I'll probably stick with that for the near future but will try out tailscale funnel in the future.

It’s not functionally different from Cloudflare tunnels, that’s the point. You get the same functionality without giving all your data to a corporation.

I'm curious how if they're functionally the same, one has all the data and the other "shouldn't be getting your data anyway". Was mostly curious to hear about informed differences in the products but clearly not going to get that, cheers.

Because Cloudflare decrypts all your traffic, and Tailscale doesn’t. It’s still functionally the same though because you accomplish the game goal in a similar manner, but one is privacy respecting and one isn’t.

You can selfhosted tailscale so that they don't have any access. You can't with cloudflare tunnels as far as I know. Tailscale's client is open source, so is their Headscale server which originally was developed by a 3rd party. You can look into the code for that. Not sure what you'd want me to say. If you really want to be informed I'd inspect the code yourself

I'm self hosting cloudflared right now, the TLS from cloudflare terminates in a container in my network and then goes to my reverse proxy container for my local network. I'm definitely going to poke around tailscale and their funnels for the future, I'm just playing devils advocate for those replying not knowing anything about cloudflare tunnels yet saying they're the wrong choice.

Cloudflare tunnels definitely aren't wrong, you're just not entirely using open source software. It's a very good option if you need to open things to the public or want to learn more about cloud services