best VPN for accessing your home network remotely

Accessing your home network remotely — files, cameras, smart home dashboards, self-hosted apps — requires a VPN that tunnels into your LAN, not a commercial privacy VPN like NordVPN or ExpressVPN. Those services route your traffic through third-party servers; they don't connect you to your home. What you need is a tool that creates a secure tunnel between your remote device and your home network.

The best choice depends on your technical comfort. Mesh VPNs like Tailscale and ZeroTier offer plug-and-play simplicity. Self-hosted WireGuard or PiVPN give you maximum speed and privacy with no vendor dependency. Headscale lets you self-host the Tailscale control plane for the best of both worlds. Here's how they compare.

the picks at a glance

1. Tailscale — best for most people

Tailscale is the easiest option by a wide margin. Install the client on your devices, sign in, and they form a peer-to-peer mesh VPN automatically — no central VPN server, no complex firewall rules, no port forwarding.4 It's built on WireGuard, so you get modern encryption and good performance without the manual configuration that raw WireGuard demands.

The free personal plan covers up to 20 devices, which is plenty for a typical home setup — your laptop, phone, a home server, maybe a Raspberry Pi. You install Tailscale on your home machine and your remote devices, and they can reach each other as if they're on the same LAN.

Tailscale wins if you want simplicity with strong security. It's ideal for individuals, small teams, or homelab builders who want to be connected in minutes rather than hours.4

Verdict: If you just want it to work, pick Tailscale.

2. WireGuard — fastest and most private

WireGuard is the underlying protocol Tailscale uses, but running it directly gives you the fastest, most secure, and most private way to access your home network remotely.1 There are no third-party dependencies — no SaaS control plane, no account, no vendor. Your keys, your servers, your rules.

The trade-off is setup. Compared to Tailscale or ZeroTier, WireGuard requires more manual configuration: generating keys, defining peers, setting up firewall rules, and handling routing.1 You'll also need to deal with DynamicDNS and port forwarding on your router.6

For power users who want maximum speed and full control, nothing beats raw WireGuard. It's the protocol everything else builds on.

Verdict: Best raw performance and privacy if you're comfortable with manual setup.

3. PiVPN — simplest self-hosted path

PiVPN is a one-command installer that sets up WireGuard or OpenVPN on a Raspberry Pi or any Debian/Ubuntu VPS.3 It handles the configuration that raw WireGuard leaves to you — key generation, firewall rules, client profiles — in a single script.

Choose PiVPN when you want one clean personal server for remote access. It's the bridge between "I want to self-host" and "I don't want to read a 40-page WireGuard tutorial." You still need port forwarding and DynamicDNS, but the installer dramatically lowers the barrier to entry.6

If you have a Raspberry Pi sitting around, PiVPN is the fastest route to a self-hosted VPN server. Reach for a mesh VPN like Tailscale when you need many nodes connected rather than a single hub.3

Verdict: The easiest way to self-host WireGuard without learning every detail.

4. ZeroTier — best for advanced home labs

ZeroTier takes a different approach: it essentially turns the internet into your LAN.2 Instead of a point-to-point tunnel, you create virtual networks that your devices join, and you get more customizability and flexibility as a result.2

Where Tailscale optimizes for simplicity, ZeroTier gives you more networking control. You can create multiple virtual networks, have devices be members of as many as you need, and use features like multicast and VLAN-like segmentation.2 This makes it better for advanced home labs where you want fine-grained control over how different devices and services communicate.

Setup is still easy — install the client and join a network — but the additional networking features mean there's more to learn if you want to take full advantage of them.

Verdict: Pick ZeroTier when you need more than a simple tunnel — multiple networks, multicast, or VLAN-style segmentation.

5. Headscale — self-hosted Tailscale for the privacy-conscious

Headscale is an open-source, self-hosted implementation of the Tailscale control server.5 It gives you the mesh VPN experience of Tailscale — WireGuard-based, peer-to-peer, easy client setup — without depending on Tailscale's SaaS infrastructure.

This is a niche pick. You get the convenience of the Tailscale client ecosystem but you run the coordination server yourself, so there's no vendor dependency and no account with a third party. The trade-off is that you're now responsible for maintaining that server.

Headscale's goal is to provide self-hosters and hobbyists with an open-source server they can use for their projects and labs.5 If you like Tailscale's approach but want full control over the control plane, this is your tool.

Verdict: Tailscale's mesh experience, fully self-hosted. For users who want the convenience without the vendor.

how to choose

Match the tool to your needs:

• Convenience: Tailscale. Install, sign in, done.
• Speed and privacy: WireGuard. No dependencies, maximum performance.
• Simple self-hosting: PiVPN. One command on a Raspberry Pi.
• Advanced networking: ZeroTier. Multiple networks, multicast, segmentation.
• Full self-host with mesh: Headscale. Tailscale's model, your server.

One tool we didn't pick: Twingate. It's a solid zero-trust access platform, but it's designed for teams and enterprise use cases. For most home users it's overkill — Tailscale covers the same ground with less complexity.4

A note on how this site works: we may earn a commission when you click through to some of the tools listed above. That doesn't change our recommendations — we picked these based on what actually works for remote home network access.