Compare
B
Blackhole
Why Engineers Switch
from Tailscale to Blackhole
Same WireGuard foundation, but positioned around terminal profiles, company workspaces, and evidence-led migration planning.
Full Feature Comparison
| Feature | Blackhole | Tailscale |
|---|---|---|
| Intra-mesh latency | 0.4ms | ~45ms |
| Self-hosted | ||
| ZK-STARK identity proofs | ||
| CRDT distributed state | ||
| BMAP self-healing | ||
| 2PC distributed transactions | ||
| Ed25519 capability tokens | ||
| 1T device capacity | ||
| XDP kernel bypass | Roadmap Q2 2026 | |
| Price (1,000 users/month) | $0 self-hosted | $6,000/mo |
| Price (1,000 users/year) | $0 | $72,000/yr |
| Control plane | Your infra | Tailscale cloud |
| Data residency | Your servers | US servers |
| FIPS-compatible crypto | ||
| Audit logs | Enterprise only | |
| RBAC | Enterprise only | |
| SSO / SAML | Enterprise only | |
| Open source | Partial | |
| Air-gapped deployment | ||
| NATS messaging layer | ||
| WireGuard encryption | ||
| NAT traversal | ||
| MagicDNS | ||
| Exit nodes | ||
| Subnet routing |
5 Reasons Engineers Switch
Cost at scale
Blackhole compares vendor pricing during assisted procurement using current public plans, seat counts, self-hosting scope, and Pitt Suite expansion value.
Self-hosted privacy
Deployment boundaries, control-plane location, metadata exposure, and audit posture are reviewed before a production migration.
Identity proof path
Blackhole positions signed mesh identity and capability boundaries as evidence-led security work, not a blanket cryptography claim.
Distributed state targets
CRDT-backed state, session presence, and partition behavior are validated against the customer topology during onboarding.
Benchmark before cutover
Latency comparisons depend on route shape, relays, hardware, and measurement method, so benchmark results are customer-specific.
Same Commands. Better Results.
Tailscale$ tailscale up # Connects to Tailscale cloud # 45ms latency # $6/user/month # Your data: Tailscale's servers
BBlackhole
RECOMMENDED$ blackhole up # Connects to your control plane # 0.4ms latency # $0/month forever # Your data: your servers
Migrate from Tailscale in 10 Minutes
3 steps. Zero downtime. No service interruption.
1Plan Blackhole alongside Tailscale
blackhole assisted-install --plan tailscale-migration
2Export your Tailscale ACL policy
tailscale policy get > policy.json blackhole import-policy policy.json
3Switch devices over and disable Tailscale
blackhole up --advertise-routes $(tailscale ip -4) tailscale down
Migrate from Tailscale in 10 minutes
Free forever for self-hosted. Save $72,000/year at 1,000 nodes. No credit card required.