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AWS Direct Connect vs Tailscale comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

AWS Direct Connect
Ranking in Enterprise Infrastructure VPN
12th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tailscale
Ranking in Enterprise Infrastructure VPN
17th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.6
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
ZTNA (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Enterprise Infrastructure VPN category, the mindshare of AWS Direct Connect is 1.9%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tailscale is 5.4%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
AWS Direct Connect1.9%
Tailscale5.4%
Other92.7%
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN
 

Featured Reviews

HS
Business Analyst & Agile Strategist at Charles Schwab
enables seamless hybrid cloud connectivity and ensures secure, low-latency data transfers with robust security features
AWS Direct Connect is very useful for transferring data between on-premise and cloud servers quickly, with minimal latency issues. It is cost-effective for large data transfers and offers excellent network performance, even with low internet quality. Its security features are critical, especially for industries like healthcare and finance, providing secure data transfer without breaches. It supports multi-account and multi-tenant environments, allowing centralized management with a single connectivity.
reviewer2797194 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer
Securing private cloud workflows has protected sensitive AWS resources with fine-grained access
The best features Tailscale offers are highlighted by the fact that setting up Tailscale was straightforward, at least once you are following the documentation and the guides. The security is valuable, as there are many providers available, but Tailscale fulfills the requirements that we had, allowing us to access and expose internal apps without exposing them to the general internet. The complex site-to-site connections are replaced using VPNs, and we can SSH into our remote desktops or SSH into our EC2 machines in our AWS regions in a secure way. About the features that make Tailscale stand out for me, with access control lists, we can fine-grain what can be accessed and by whom. It solved our base use case, which is keeping our secured infrastructure behind a private VPN, and that is why we started using it in the first place. Tailscale has had more positive impacts on my organization regarding security.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Direct Connect is its low latency to the users."
"AWS Direct Connect is highly secure and much faster compared to normal network infrastructure."
"Overall, I rate the solution ten out of ten."
"AWS Direct Connect allows me to connect our on-premise infrastructure directly with AWS infrastructure."
"Direct Connect provides an improved connection quality and a diversified link, which contributes to high availability and failover capabilities."
"AWS VPN is cost-effective and affordable; it has the security regulation with 3DES protocol, and they have the security protocol required to encrypt the information in the link."
"It is a stable solution."
"AWS Direct Connect provides a secure and encrypted connection over the internet."
"The security is valuable, as there are many providers available, but Tailscale fulfills the requirements that we had, allowing us to access and expose internal apps without exposing them to the general internet."
 

Cons

"The platform's stability needs improvement."
"It can be difficult to configure compared to cloud-based GUIs."
"It is complicated to do additional BGP configuration for the product."
"Having more locations could improve the convenience of using the service."
"AWS Direct Connect should support cross-cloud connections, such as migrations between Azure and AWS, for disaster recovery purposes on different cloud platforms."
"There is no room for improvement in Direct Connect right now."
"AWS Direct Connect is straightforward and performs well for me."
"It would be good if we could connect AWS Direct Connect from different networks."
"Regarding how Tailscale can be improved, I think for free users, there are some limited options."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an expensive solution."
"It has reasonable pricing in terms of the features offered."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
12%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise3
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS Direct Connect?
AWS Direct Connect provides a secure and encrypted connection over the internet.
What needs improvement with AWS Direct Connect?
We encountered issues with the connection. The VPN was not connecting on multiple occasions.
What is your primary use case for AWS Direct Connect?
I'm not an end user of any of those SAP products. I wanted to have a comparison between different solutions for process mining and process modeling, but I'm not an end user of any. I have Microsoft...
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Bamboo Health, Duolingo, Shiguredo, Instacart, Corelight, Machinify, Bolt, Mercari, Cobalt, Yugabyte, Jasper, VersaBank, Zego, Gini and Finter
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, OpenVPN, Check Point Software Technologies and others in Enterprise Infrastructure VPN. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.