Is Headscale or Soketi better?

Neither clearly leads. Headscale starts at Free and Soketi at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.

Which is cheaper, Headscale or Soketi?

Headscale starts at Free and Soketi at Free.

Does Headscale or Soketi run on more platforms?

Headscale runs on Linux, Docker. Soketi runs on Linux, macOS, Windows.

Can I use Headscale for free?

Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.

What is Headscale best used for?

Headscale is most often used for running a mesh network where no third party may hold the device registry, a homelab or personal fleet where paying per user for a hosted control plane is not worth it, air gapped or restricted environments that cannot reach an external coordination service, keeping the tailscale client experience while removing the vendor from the trust path. Of those, running a mesh network where no third party may hold the device registry and a homelab or personal fleet where paying per user for a hosted control plane is not worth it are not what Soketi is typically brought in for.

What can Headscale do that Soketi cannot?

Headscale covers Self hosted control server, Access control policies, User separation, Pre-authentication keys. Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility, Presence and private channels, Horizontal scaling, App management backends.

Networking · head to head

Headscale vs Soketi

Headscale

Networking

Open source reimplementation of the Tailscale coordination server for a single organisation

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

Soketi

Developer Tools

Self-hosted, Pusher-compatible WebSockets server with a stalled maintenance record

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

The short version

Each has a real cost: Headscale the clients are proprietary software maintained by a company with no obligation to Headscale, so a client update can change protocol behaviour and break your control server until volunteers catch up.; Soketi maintenance has effectively stalled: the maintainer has said time is severely limited, releases are infrequent, and the community has been discussing whether the project is abandoned, which means security fixes may not arrive.
They diverge on capability: Headscale covers Self hosted control server, Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility.
Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Headscale and Soketi actually diverge.

Attributes where Headscale and Soketi differ
Attribute	Headscale	Soketi
Platforms	Linux, Docker	Linux, macOS, Windows
Category	Networking	Developer Tools

Identical on both: starting price (Free), pricing model (Open source, no licence fee), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Headscale

Self hosted control server
Access control policies
User separation
Pre-authentication keys
Subnet routers and exit nodes
Own or shared DERP

Only in Soketi

Pusher protocol compatibility
Presence and private channels
Horizontal scaling
App management backends
Webhooks
Prometheus metrics

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Headscale

Running a mesh network where no third party may hold the device registrynot Soketi
A homelab or personal fleet where paying per user for a hosted control plane is not worth itnot Soketi
Air gapped or restricted environments that cannot reach an external coordination servicenot Soketi
Keeping the Tailscale client experience while removing the vendor from the trust pathnot Soketi

Soketi

A Laravel application that already uses Echo and wants to stop paying a hosted realtime providernot Headscale
Realtime notifications or presence indicators where data must not leave your own infrastructure for compliance reasonsnot Headscale
A local or CI environment that needs a Pusher-compatible server without hitting a paid accountnot Headscale
A high-connection-count application where hosted per-connection pricing has become the largest line in the infrastructure billnot Headscale

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Headscale

The clients are proprietary software maintained by a company with no obligation to Headscale, so a client update can change protocol behaviour and break your control server until volunteers catch up.
Features that live on the vendor side, including the admin console, Funnel and app connectors, do not exist here and cannot be added, so feature comparisons against Tailscale are misleading.
There is no official web interface, so day to day administration is a command line tool or one of several unofficial front ends of varying quality and maintenance.
It is deliberately single tenant, so a managed service provider cannot use one deployment to serve several customer networks.
Upgrades have required database migrations and policy format changes between releases, and with no support contract a failed migration on the control server is your problem alone.

Soketi

Maintenance has effectively stalled: the maintainer has said time is severely limited, releases are infrequent, and the community has been discussing whether the project is abandoned, which means security fixes may not arrive.
Dependency drift on Node and uWebSockets.js will eventually force you to fork or migrate, and that cost is unbudgeted at the point you adopt it.
There is no commercial support to buy, so a production incident at three in the morning is entirely your problem with no escalation path.
Scaling beyond a single node needs Redis and careful configuration, and getting presence channels correct across nodes is a genuine source of subtle bugs.
It implements the Pusher protocol rather than tracking it, so any protocol feature Pusher adds later will not appear, and the compatibility guarantee slowly decays.

Pricing, plan by plan

Headscale

Free

HeadscaleFree
- Full functionality, no node limit
- Official Tailscale clients on every platform
- No vendor account required

Soketi

Free

SoketiFree
- MIT licensed
- Unlimited connections subject to your own hardware
- No vendor billing

Which should you pick?

Choose Headscale if

You need self hosted control server.
You want to start without paying.
You work on Linux, Docker.
You also want access control policies.

Headscale review

Choose Soketi if

You need pusher protocol compatibility.
You want to start without paying.
You work on Linux, macOS, Windows.
You also want presence and private channels.

Soketi review

Questions people ask

Is Headscale or Soketi better?: Neither clearly leads. Headscale starts at Free and Soketi at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Headscale or Soketi?: Headscale starts at Free and Soketi at Free.
Does Headscale or Soketi run on more platforms?: Headscale runs on Linux, Docker. Soketi runs on Linux, macOS, Windows.
Can I use Headscale for free?: Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Headscale best used for?: Headscale is most often used for running a mesh network where no third party may hold the device registry, a homelab or personal fleet where paying per user for a hosted control plane is not worth it, air gapped or restricted environments that cannot reach an external coordination service, keeping the tailscale client experience while removing the vendor from the trust path. Of those, running a mesh network where no third party may hold the device registry and a homelab or personal fleet where paying per user for a hosted control plane is not worth it are not what Soketi is typically brought in for.
What can Headscale do that Soketi cannot?: Headscale covers Self hosted control server, Access control policies, User separation, Pre-authentication keys. Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility, Presence and private channels, Horizontal scaling, App management backends.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Headscale: Is Headscale made by Tailscale?

No. It is an independent community project. Tailscale acknowledges it but does not support it, and the clients it relies on are the vendor ones.

Soketi: Is Soketi still maintained?

Barely. The maintainer has stated that available time is very limited and releases have been sparse; treat it as community-maintained.

Headscale: What do I lose compared with the hosted service?

The admin console, the vendor relay network unless you use the public DERP servers, and hosted only features such as Funnel and app connectors.

Soketi: Do I need to change my client code?

No. Pusher client SDKs and Laravel Echo work by changing the host, port and credentials.

Headscale: Can I still use the public relay servers?

Yes, the default configuration can use them, though many self hosters run their own DERP to remove that dependency.

Soketi: What does it cost?

Nothing in licence fees. It is MIT licensed; you pay for the server it runs on.

Headscale: Is it suitable for a company network?

For a technical team, yes. There is no vendor to escalate to, so it needs someone on staff who is willing to own the control server.

Soketi: What are people moving to?

Laravel Reverb for Laravel applications, and Sockudo, a Rust reimplementation, for others.

Headscale vs Soketi

Headscale

Soketi

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Headscale

Only in Soketi

What people use each for

Headscale

Soketi

Where each one falls short

Headscale

Soketi

Pricing, plan by plan

Headscale

Soketi

Which should you pick?

Choose Headscale if

Choose Soketi if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Headscale

More on Soketi

Keep looking

Other head to heads