A Raspberry Pi makes a quiet, low-power, always-on VPN server — and you hold the keys. Here's how PiVPN, WireGuard, Headscale, Gluetun, and OpenVPN stack up for different self-hosting needs.
A Raspberry Pi is a surprisingly good VPN server. It sips power, stays on 24/7, and — most importantly — you control the encryption keys. No third-party SaaS, no mystery data handling, no subscription. Just your hardware, your network, your rules.6
The catch: "self-hosted VPN" means different things to different people. You might want a classic tunnel to reach your home network from the road. You might want a mesh overlay that skips port forwarding entirely. You might want your Pi to act as a privacy gateway, routing traffic through a commercial VPN. Each of those calls for a different tool.
This guide ranks five options by ease of setup, performance on Pi hardware, and intended use case — so you can pick the one that matches what you're actually trying to do.
| Use case | Pick |
|---|---|
| "I just want a VPN on my Pi, no fuss" | PiVPN |
| "I want maximum speed and I'm comfortable in a terminal" | WireGuard (raw) |
| "I have multiple devices behind different NATs and hate port forwarding" | Headscale |
| "I want my Pi to route traffic through a paid VPN for privacy" | Gluetun |
| "I need the widest possible client compatibility" | OpenVPN |
PiVPN is a shell script that installs and configures WireGuard or OpenVPN on a Raspberry Pi (or any Debian-based system) with a single command.1 It's purpose-built for Pi hardware, handles key generation, firewall rules, and client profile creation for you, and walks you through the process interactively.
If you've never set up a VPN before, start here. The installer asks a few questions, generates your configs, and you're done. You get to choose WireGuard or OpenVPN at install time, so you're not locked into one protocol.
The trade-off is that PiVPN is an installer, not a protocol. Under the hood it's running WireGuard or OpenVPN — so the performance and security properties come from whichever protocol you pick during setup. PiVPN's value is removing friction, not adding capability.
Verdict: Top pick for most users. It turns a multi-hour setup into a five-minute one.
WireGuard is a modern VPN protocol with a small codebase and a kernel-level implementation on Linux.2 On Raspberry Pi's ARM CPU, that matters: WireGuard runs in kernel space, which means significantly higher throughput and lower latency than OpenVPN on the same hardware.
You can install WireGuard manually on a Pi (the wireguard-tools package is in Debian/Raspbian repos), or you can get it through PiVPN. The manual route gives you more control over configuration — useful if you want custom routing rules, multiple interfaces, or integration with other services on the Pi.
The downside is that "manual" means manual. You're writing config files, generating keys, and managing firewall rules yourself. If that sounds like fun, WireGuard raw is the best choice. If it sounds like a chore, use PiVPN.
Verdict: Best protocol for Pi hardware. Pair it with PiVPN for easy mode, or run it standalone for maximum control.
Headscale is an open-source, self-hosted implementation of the Tailscale control server.3 Instead of a traditional hub-and-spoke VPN where every client connects to your Pi, Headscale (with Tailscale clients on your devices) creates a mesh: devices talk to each other directly, and the control server just coordinates.
The big advantage is that it eliminates the need for port forwarding. If your Pi sits behind a carrier-grade NAT, or your home IP changes frequently, a traditional VPN setup is painful. Headscale solves this — devices find each other through the coordination server and establish direct WireGuard tunnels when possible, falling back to relay when needed.
Headscale runs on Raspberry Pi, though it's a Go binary and benefits from a Pi 4 or 5 for headroom. You'll need to run the Headscale server somewhere always-reachable (your Pi, a VPS, or a small cloud instance) and install Tailscale clients on the devices you want to connect.
Verdict: Best for multi-device mesh networking. If NAT traversal is your problem, this is your answer.
Gluetun flips the usual VPN-on-Pi model. Instead of your Pi being the VPN server that you connect to, Gluetun is a VPN client in a Docker container that routes the Pi's own traffic through a commercial VPN provider.4
This is the right tool when you want your Pi to act as a secure exit node — for example, running downloads, torrents, or other traffic through a paid VPN so your ISP doesn't see it. Gluetun supports both WireGuard and OpenVPN and works with multiple commercial VPN providers (Mullvad, NordVPN, ProtonVPN, and others).
You'll need Docker on your Pi (Docker runs well on Pi 4 and 5), and an active subscription to a supported commercial VPN. Gluetun handles the connection, DNS, and kill-switch logic so traffic doesn't leak if the VPN drops.
Verdict: Best for privacy-gateway use cases. Not a VPN server — a VPN client that makes your Pi's traffic private.
OpenVPN is the long-established VPN protocol with the broadest client compatibility across all platforms.5 If you have a device that doesn't support WireGuard — an older phone, a legacy router, a corporate machine with restricted software — OpenVPN is what you fall back to.
On Raspberry Pi, OpenVPN is more CPU-intensive than WireGuard. The same Pi that can saturate a gigabit link over WireGuard will top out noticeably lower with OpenVPN's userspace encryption. For most home users that's still plenty of bandwidth, but it's a real difference if you're pushing a lot of traffic.
You can install OpenVPN via PiVPN (which handles the setup) or manually. The manual route gives you access to OpenVPN's mature tooling — client management scripts, certificate revocation, detailed logging — at the cost of more configuration complexity.
Verdict: Use it when you need maximum client compatibility. Otherwise, WireGuard is faster on the same hardware.
Some of the project pages referenced here were inaccessible during research due to persistent network errors. The descriptions above are based on well-known project documentation and community knowledge. Verify current setup instructions against each project's official docs before deploying — VPN software updates frequently, and configuration details change.
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