ZeroTier
Ranked 4 of 12 mesh VPNs by recommenders
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.
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.
29 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 19
- criticize it
- 10
- approval share
- 66%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 19 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.9 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Long-term use and paid customers
“I've been using it on some of my personal devices for a while.”
Comment from 29 Oct 2026 in “Tailscale SSH: Investigation and remediation update” “I am a Zerotier customer and have been for years”
Comment from 28 Aug 2026 in “CEO fired developers to make room for AI. Developers create open source AI CEO” “am a Zerotier customer and have been for years”
Comment from 28 Aug 2026 in “CEO fired developers to make room for AI. Developers create open source AI CEO” - Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “I wasted years of my life in crypto”
Alternative to Tailscale and Netbird
“Alternatives are Logmein Hamachi(might be dating myself here, haven't used them in 10+ years), Zerotier, Netbird. Headscale too.”
Comment from 31 Jul 2026 in “Tailscale didn't stop the Hugging Face intrusion” “Tailscale, ZeroTier, Netbird, and similar may be able to do much of the work for you”
Comment from 29 Oct 2026 in “If IPv4 were land” “mesh networks like zero tier and tailscale”
Comment from 15 Nov 2025 in “Our investigation into the suspicious pressure on Archive.today” Generous free tier
“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”
Comment from 18 Feb 2026 in “Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available” “liked zerotier better; it was faster, and a more generous free tier”
Comment from 18 Feb 2026 in “Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available” Remote access without public exposure
“I run with a ZeroTier connection so I can access it from anywhere without the risk of it being live on the internet.”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)” “the general use case is use of Tailscale/Zerotier where you are in control of your network”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: A pager”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Slow performance and high latency
“I found Zerotier's single threaded performance to be abysmal, making it basically unusable for small single core VMs”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Unifi Travel Router” “not as fast as Wireguard in my testing”
Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “Netbird a German Tailscale alternative (P2P WireGuard-based overlay network)” “ZT's raw performance is quite poor.”
Comment from 25 Dec 2025 in “Unifi Travel Router” - Comment from 14 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: Vxlan over WireGuard or WireGuard over Vxlan?”
Unstable connections and dropped links
“infrequent but annoying drops in connection, and DNS is a headache”
Comment from 1 Feb 2026 in “Netbird a German Tailscale alternative (P2P WireGuard-based overlay network)” “ZeroTier is sometimes unstable for me”
Comment from 29 Oct 2026 in “Tailscale SSH: Investigation and remediation update” Needs tuning and self-hosting effort
“Zerotier is a lot harder to self-host than tailscale”
Comment from 18 Feb 2026 in “Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available” “ZT definitely takes some effort for tuning.”
Comment from 19 Feb 2026 in “Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available” Lacks features compared to alternatives
“found Twingate, Netbird, Netmaker and Zerotier lacking in one way or another”
Comment from 22 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Netrinos – A keep it simple Mesh VPN for small teams” “something ZeroTier lacked”
Comment from 1 Feb 2026 in “Netbird a German Tailscale alternative (P2P WireGuard-based overlay network)”
Other mesh VPNs people recommend
The four most recommended other mesh VPNs, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tailscale | 809 | 210 | 79% | 12 | 1 yr13 owners | Approved |
| Headscale | 79 | 23 | 77% | 12 | — | Approved |
| NetBird | 79 | 25 | 76% | 12 | 2 yrs6 owners | Approved |
| ZeroTierThis page | 19 | 10 | 66% | 9 | — | — |
| Tailscale Peer Relays | 15 | 2 | 88% | 1 | — | — |
What people said
27 of the 33 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Tailscale, ZeroTier, Netbird, and similar may be able to do much of the work for you”
“ZeroTier is much less likely to screw you over than any ISP.”
“I've been using it on some of my personal devices for a while.”
“ZeroTier is sometimes unstable for me”
“I am a Zerotier customer and have been for years”
“am a Zerotier customer and have been for years”
“Alternatives are Logmein Hamachi(might be dating myself here, haven't used them in 10+ years), Zerotier, Netbird. Headscale too.”
“Zerotier will, after a minute or so, completely take over the routing and default everything through Zerotier”
“ZT definitely takes some effort for tuning.”
“Zerotier is a lot harder to self-host than tailscale”
“liked zerotier better; it was faster, and a more generous free tier”
“I found it reliable in some cases in IoT world”
“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”
“not as fast as Wireguard in my testing”
“Zerotier works better with multicast, specifically multicast video”
“infrequent but annoying drops in connection, and DNS is a headache”
“something ZeroTier lacked”
“Latency is extremely bad.”
“get similar capabilities without a third-party being a blocker”
“ZT's raw performance is quite poor.”
“I found Zerotier's single threaded performance to be abysmal, making it basically unusable for small single core VMs”
“It's running, but doesn't affect anything network-wise for the other applications”
“found Twingate, Netbird, Netmaker and Zerotier lacking in one way or another”
“I run with a ZeroTier connection so I can access it from anywhere without the risk of it being live on the internet.”
“the general use case is use of Tailscale/Zerotier where you are in control of your network”
“zerotier is really good software that I used”
“mesh networks like zero tier and tailscale”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.