# Rayfish

11 Hacker News commenters recommended Rayfish and 8 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 2 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free peer-to-peer mesh VPN that people like for having no central server to trust; critics note it still needs a coordination server and is not production ready.

## Why people recommend it

- Peer-to-peer with no central server (3 comments): "There is no central control plane that brokers your traffic or holds the keys to your network." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48746039)) "I just build rayfish because I want truly decentralized networks." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48804621)) "Rayfish is p2p no central coordination needed." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48804665))
- Alternative to Tailscale, compatible with it (3 comments): "it is compatible with tailscale nowadays so you can run both tailscale and rayfish" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49454825)) "Great work. I'm currently using tailscale and would love to have another option!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48795281)) "This is very cool - I will likely see if I can use it in place of tailscale" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48795382))
- Cool project that fits a need (3 comments): "this is a very cool project and one that is the obvious next step with iroh" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48795530)) "I think it is a good product many people like me will enjoy" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48809415)) "It is a cool project and fits a real need." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48806832))

## What people warn about

- Only weeks old, hype-style marketing (4 comments): "there aren't enough trust signals for me for this project yet" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48796027)) "Going from starting the project two weeks ago to already having a flashy marketing site is another tell" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48796014)) "They can be spotted a mile away. Check the repo - 2 weeks to complete!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48796254))
- Hard membership revocation and deniability (2 comments): "I like the project though. What's the sigh to, out of curiosity, just because this makes revocation hard?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48795882)) "which makes membership deniability non-trivial which I don't love" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48796000))
- Still needs a coordination server (2 comments): "a coordination server is necessary which kinda somewhat defeats the "mesh" claim" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48799079)) "It is wrong to describe these P2P products as server-less." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48796218))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [NetBird](https://hackerapproved.com/p/netbird.md): 79 recommend
- [Tinc VPN](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tinc.md): 6 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Rayfish", https://hackerapproved.com/p/rayfish/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).