Blackhole vs. Tailscale: Same WireGuard, Half the Price
Both Blackhole and Tailscale are WireGuard mesh VPNs with excellent NAT traversal and MagicDNS. The core protocol is identical. The difference is in pricing, self-hosting, and who controls your data. A 50-person team pays $900/mo on Tailscale Premium versus $450/mo on Blackhole Pro.
The Core: Identical
Start with what's the same. Both products use WireGuard under the hood — the same ChaCha20 encryption, Curve25519 key exchange, and Poly1305 MAC. Traffic is end-to-end encrypted at the kernel level, not in userspace. The cryptography is not a differentiator.
NAT traversal is also comparable. Both use STUN to discover external endpoints and attempt UDP hole-punching before falling back to relay servers. Both achieve >99% direct connection rates in real-world networks. Both work on macOS, Linux, Windows, iOS, and Android.
MagicDNS is equivalent: devices get stable hostnames like laptop.tailnet-name.ts.net vs. laptop.mesh-name.bhnet. Custom domains and split-DNS are supported in both.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Blackhole | Tailscale |
|---|---|---|
| WireGuard encryption | ||
| NAT traversal (STUN + hole-punch) | ||
| Relay servers (fallback) | ||
| MagicDNS | ||
| Exit nodes | ||
| File transfer (CLI) | ||
| Mobile apps (iOS + Android) | ||
| ACL rules (tag-based) | ||
| RBAC (team roles)Tailscale requires Enterprise plan ($) | Enterprise | |
| Subnet routing | ||
| Self-hosted coordination serverTailscale open-source is headscale (unofficial) | Limited | |
| Private relay servers | Pro+ | Enterprise |
| Audit logs | All plans | Business+ |
| SSO / SAML | Pro+ | Enterprise |
| REST API | ||
| Open-source client | ||
| Open-source serverTailscale server is proprietary |
Pricing Breakdown
This is where the gap becomes real. Tailscale charges per user on every plan. Blackhole charges per seat with a lower per-seat rate.
| Team Size | Blackhole Pro | Tailscale Premium | You Save |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 people | $90/mo | $180/mo | $1,080/yr |
| 25 people | $225/mo | $450/mo | $2,700/yr |
| 50 people | $450/mo | $900/mo | $5,400/yr |
| 100 people | $900/mo | $1,800/mo | $10,800/yr |
At 50 people, you are paying $5,400/year more for Tailscale Premium over Blackhole Pro for equivalent features. At 100 people that gap is $10,800/year — enough for another full-time engineer.
The Self-Hosting Difference
Tailscale is a managed service. The coordination server (the component that distributes public keys and syncs ACLs) runs on Tailscale's infrastructure. The open-source alternative is headscale, a community project that is not officially supported by Tailscale.
Blackhole ships the coordination server as a first-class open-source component. It is the same binary that runs our managed cloud. You can run it with Docker Compose in 15 minutes and point your clients at your own server — no code changes, no forks.
For regulated industries (healthcare, finance, defense), self-hosting is often a compliance requirement. Blackhole makes this straightforward. Tailscale requires headscale and community support.
Migration Path
Migrating from Tailscale to Blackhole takes about 30 minutes for a small team. The process:
- 1.Export your ACL policy from the Tailscale admin console (it's JSON — copy it).
- 2.Sign up for Blackhole and paste your ACL policy. The format is compatible.
- 3.Replace bh up for tailscale up on each device. IPs will change, so update any hardcoded references.
- 4.Test connectivity with bh ping for each peer pair.
- 5.Cancel your Tailscale subscription.
The main friction is IP changes — Blackhole uses the 100.64.0.0/10 CGNAT range just like Tailscale, but addresses are assigned differently. If you use MagicDNS hostnames everywhere (you should), this is a non-issue.
The Verdict
Choose Tailscale if: you need Tailscale-specific integrations, you are already deep in the ecosystem, or Tailscale's enterprise support contracts are a procurement requirement.
Choose Blackhole if: you want the same WireGuard security at half the price, you need self-hosting as a first-class option, or you want RBAC without paying enterprise rates.