# ZeroTier 19 Hacker News commenters recommended ZeroTier and 10 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 9 of 13 months. **Verdict:** People recommend it as a free-tier mesh network that links devices across the internet without exposing them publicly. Critics report slow performance and occasional instability. ## Why people recommend it - Long-term use and paid customers (4 comments): "I've been using it on some of my personal devices for a while." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50286660)) "I am a Zerotier customer and have been for years" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49479863)) "am a Zerotier customer and have been for years" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49475139)) - Alternative to Tailscale and Netbird (3 comments): "Alternatives are Logmein Hamachi(might be dating myself here, haven't used them in 10+ years), Zerotier, Netbird. Headscale too." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49128745)) "Tailscale, ZeroTier, Netbird, and similar may be able to do much of the work for you" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50295745)) "mesh networks like zero tier and tailscale" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45938347)) - Generous free tier (2 comments): "during the first 3-4 years we paid nothing because as far as I can recall there was nothing extra that we needed that paying would've gotten us" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47064165)) "liked zerotier better; it was faster, and a more generous free tier" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47067539)) - Remote access without public exposure (2 comments): "I run with a ZeroTier connection so I can access it from anywhere without the risk of it being live on the internet." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46290926)) "the general use case is use of Tailscale/Zerotier where you are in control of your network" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46270143)) ## What people warn about - Slow performance and high latency (4 comments): "I found Zerotier's single threaded performance to be abysmal, making it basically unusable for small single core VMs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46375872)) "not as fast as Wireguard in my testing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46871440)) "ZT's raw performance is quite poor." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46387789)) - Unstable connections and dropped links (2 comments): "infrequent but annoying drops in connection, and DNS is a headache" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46846911)) "ZeroTier is sometimes unstable for me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50284383)) - Needs tuning and self-hosting effort (2 comments): "Zerotier is a lot harder to self-host than tailscale" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47067555)) "ZT definitely takes some effort for tuning." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47069270)) - Lacks features compared to alternatives (2 comments): "found Twingate, Netbird, Netmaker and Zerotier lacking in one way or another" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46359705)) "something ZeroTier lacked" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46845700)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Tailscale](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tailscale.md): 809 recommend - [Headscale](https://hackerapproved.com/p/headscale.md): 79 recommend - [Tailscale Peer Relays](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tailscale-peer-relays.md): 15 recommend - [OpenZiti](https://hackerapproved.com/p/openziti.md): 10 recommend - [Tela](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tela.md): 10 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://www.zerotier.com/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "ZeroTier", https://hackerapproved.com/p/zerotier/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).