Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Google Cloud VPN 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

Google Cloud VPN
Ranking in Enterprise Infrastructure VPN
21st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tailscale
Ranking in Enterprise Infrastructure VPN
14th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
ZTNA (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Enterprise Infrastructure VPN category, the mindshare of Google Cloud VPN is 1.1%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tailscale is 4.8%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Tailscale4.8%
Google Cloud VPN1.1%
Other94.1%
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN
 

Featured Reviews

Prashast Tripathi - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Engineer at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
Customizes networks with flexible configurations and high reliability
Google Cloud VPN offers a lot of flexibility to customize, supporting dual track IPv4 and IPv6, and v6-only configurations. It supports dynamic routing, and the SLA is a key factor with a 99.999% reliability. The Cloud VPN tunnel supports up to 250,000 packets per second for both ingress and egress traffic.
reviewer2811270 - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Secure access has simplified hybrid connectivity and has unified multi-cluster workflows
I would say that in terms of Tailscale, if I have so many tailnets I need to connect to, there are some issues in the login process that need a little bit of attention from the Tailscale team. Sometimes, you would probably need to restart your entire system for it to connect. As a DevOps as a Service engineer, I have so many clients that are using Tailscale, and I would need to connect to maybe five different tailnets because they are different clients. Client A might have a Tailscale, Client B, Client C, and so on. When changing between tailnets, sometimes it hangs. Sometimes you might need to restart your entire system. This is a bit of a headache in that aspect. However, I believe if you are just using a particular tailnet, just one, then it is quite easy and there won't be any headache. For me, I think it can be improved in the aspect of having multiple tailnets to connect to. A good refresh on the Tailscale side and the backend side to refresh the connection anytime there is a new connection to be made would be helpful. Instead of needing to restart the system, it should be able to refresh itself. The connection side and connecting to multiple Tailscale instances can be problematic, and sometimes you have to restart your system when switching between them. The ACL sometimes is like another language on its own entirely. It is fine, but they need to make it in a YAML format instead of the current format because it is quite new and something you have to go and study. If they can make it like a YAML format, that would be better. Aside from the switching which I mentioned and the fact that you have to relearn their ACL, if the ACL could be in a YAML format instead of JSON format, that would be beneficial. I don't think there is much they can do about the switching of tailnets, but if they can have a YAML format of the ACL, that would be good. Every other thing is a ten out of ten. The connection-wise is easy to set up and easy to install. It is good to have things connected all together from on-premises, from so many environments, and even exit nodes as well. It is good overall. The pricing, I think Tailscale can be a little bit on the higher side. It is not for teams with just small users. If you want to set it up for small users and a small startup, I don't think you can afford it and might need to go to other open-source alternatives. It is good for teams that have maybe fifty plus users or one hundred users. In terms of pricing, I would say it is on the higher side, but it is worth it. The price is worth the functionality. As a user, I would say it is more on the higher side, but based on its functionality, it is worth the price.

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 features of Google Cloud VPN are its speed, connectivity, and reliability."
"Google Cloud VPN offers a lot of flexibility to customize, supporting dual track IPv4 and IPv6, and v6-only configurations."
"The most valuable feature of the product is its compatibility with almost every network."
"Any time we had an issue with connecting the OpenVPN to a user, we just to them on the group's VPN and connected our VPN."
"Google Cloud VPN is a reliable and easy-to-use solution."
"The most valuable features of Google Cloud VPN are its speed, connectivity, and reliability."
"With Tailscale, I set it up and forget it because it just works, allowing me to avoid worrying about the whole VPN aspect of my home network architecture."
"Tailscale is a very solid framework and is very useful for smaller companies if they want to start out or even bigger companies who want to have a robust network of devices that they want to manage."
"Tailscale has been helping my organization a lot, primarily for security, as I do not have to open up any port in my router, which is really helpful."
"This quick setup with Tailscale has saved me probably days of work that I would have spent learning how to configure traditional VPN solutions, more traditional solutions like WireGuard, where I would have had to learn their entire configuration process and it would have taken days just to set that up."
"Tailscale has really helped in terms of security because users can be in another part of the world and, instead of them connecting to the company environment through the local network there, they can switch on their Tailscale and once they switch on their Tailscale, they don't have to connect over their internet; they just go through Tailscale to access company infrastructures."
"I have been using it every day since June 2025, and it has never given me a problem."
"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."
"Tailscale has positively impacted my organization by making the previously unusable doorbell with the cloud solution fast and reliable for remote access."
 

Cons

"The price for Google solutions could be cheaper. In general, I would rate it a seven."
"The logging needs improvement."
"The customer service and support from Google are not top-notch yet are available."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"The customer service and support from Google are not top-notch yet are available. I would rate them around 7.5 to eight out of ten."
"The platform's pricing needs improvement. Additionally, cost-efficiency enhancements or service integrations could add further value."
"Sometimes you might need to restart your entire system for it to connect."
"I initially got introduced to Tailscale in high school when I needed access to services running on my server, but due to deep packet inspection being in place, I could not use Tailscale."
"I think Tailscale can be improved by enhancing the free side of things."
"Regarding how Tailscale can be improved, I think for free users, there are some limited options."
"One thing I want Tailscale to improve is their user interface for Arch Linux, which is one of the devices I have that I installed Tailscale on, but they do not have the native package with full features, a capability I really want them to develop."
"I feel the speed of the control servers are a bit too slow."
"However, I think improvements could be made in the support for UI clients, especially on Linux machines."
"Currently, if Tailscale goes down, our services are not operable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is fairly priced."
"It's not super cheap, but it's also not unrealistically priced."
"The product pricing is high."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Enterprise Infrastructure VPN solutions are best for your needs.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Comms Service Provider
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Media Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise1
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Cloud VPN?
The price for Google solutions could be cheaper. In general, I would rate it a seven.
What needs improvement with Google Cloud VPN?
The troubleshooting guides need to be updated. We see errors but there's no proper documentation for resolving them. If Google can improve their resources on common problems and solutions, it would...
What is your primary use case for Google Cloud VPN?
We set a VPC boundary for all our storage with Google Cloud VPN. For all our compute, everything goes into those VPC boundaries.
What needs improvement with Tailscale?
Regarding how Tailscale can be improved, I think for free users, there are some limited options. However, we have a paid policy, so we pay Tailscale every month. At some point, we may want to host ...
What is your primary use case for Tailscale?
We have been using Tailscale for about four or five months, and we have been using it from the beginning. For our main use case, we use Tailscale because it creates a peer-to-peer VPN mesh where we...
What advice do you have for others considering Tailscale?
My advice to others looking into using Tailscale is that if there is a use case where you want to secure your private EC2 instances, the workflows, your Git repositories, and sensitive data, Docker...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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 OpenVPN, Fortinet, Check Point Software Technologies and others in Enterprise Infrastructure VPN. Updated: February 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.