Zero-trust network access
Each provider is profiled from its own pricing page, with the source recorded against every figure. One counts people and ignores devices, one counts both and bills every machine past an allowance, and one counts people and then caps how many you may have. A small team with a large fleet lands in a different order from a large team with a laptop each.
Zero-trust network access
| Provider | Entry paid plan | Free allowance | What is metered |
|---|---|---|---|
| NetBird | €6 per active user per month for Team, which lifts the user cap and includes 100 machines plus 10 per user. Business is €12. Converted for comparison at the ECB reference rate of 1 EUR = 1.1539 USD (2026-09-15, api.frankfurter.dev), which puts Team at about $6.92/month and Business at about $13.85. NetBird publishes no USD price; the conversion is ours and moves with the rate. | Up to 5 users and 100 machines, with peer-to-peer encryption, social SSO and MFA, access controls, private DNS and network routes — no commercial-use restriction stated. | Per active user per month in euros, with MACHINES METERED SEPARATELY — 100 included plus 10 per user, then €0.50 a month each. Both are counted only if they connected or logged in during the billing period, so an idle device is not billed. Self-hosting is offered as the alternative to any of it. |
| Tailscale | $8 per user per month for Standard, which lifts the user cap entirely and adds SCIM provisioning. | Nearly all of the product, for individuals — Tailscale's own wording — rather than a feature-stripped tier. The limit is that it is one person, not which features they get. | Per user per month, $8 on Standard, with machines not counted separately — the meter is people, and a user connecting twenty devices pays the same as one connecting two. |
| Twingate | $5 per user per month for Teams, capped at 100 users; Business is $10 to 500 users. A separate $15 a month Home plan covers up to 7 users for a homelab. | Up to 5 users, with peer-to-peer connections, split tunnelling and conditional access controls — but limited to non-commercial use, which the other two do not restrict. | Per user per month AND capped by user count at every tier: Starter is free to 5 users, Teams is $5 to 100, Business is $10 to 500. You pay per head and the plan still runs out of heads, which is a different shape from a per-seat price with no ceiling. |
Which to consider
Running it yourself, or wanting idle machines not to cost anything. It is open source with a self-hosted path, and both users and machines are counted only if they actually connected during the billing period.
A small team with a lot of machines. The meter is people, not devices, so one engineer connecting twenty servers pays for one seat — and the free Personal tier is, in Tailscale's own words, nearly all of the product rather than a stripped one.
Retiring a legacy VPN on a budget, at a known headcount. $5 a user to 100 people is the cheapest commercial seat of the three, and device posture checks and least-privilege policies arrive at that tier rather than above it.