Tailscale connects your devices into one private WireGuard network, with detailed access rules and clients for every platform. Paperboat also connects your machines privately, but it is built around working on them: terminals that survive disconnects, SSH and files, encrypted environment variables, previews and tunnels.
Checked against Tailscale's own documentation and pricing, November 2026. Sources are listed under the table.
Tailscale gives every device an address on a private network and leaves the rest to the tools you already use: you open ssh, start tmux, copy files with scp.
Paperboat is one install per machine and a sign-in. There is no network, gateway or proxy to plan, and nothing to keep running besides the machines themselves.
A Tailscale SSH session is a normal SSH session: when the connection drops, the shell ends unless you started tmux. SSH Console opens a shell in the admin console's browser tab, for owners and admins, and also ends when the tab closes.
Paperboat terminals run on the machine and keep running when your laptop sleeps or the network drops. When you come back, from the same computer, another one or a browser, you see what happened while you were away, and you can let someone watch or type along.
$ ssh devbox
$ tmux new -A -s work$ pb devbox
# later, from any device
$ pb connect devboxFunnel shares a local HTTPS service on your tailnet's ts.net name, on ports 443, 8443 or 10000. Your own domains aren't supported for Funnel.
pb preview gives a port a public HTTPS link in one command, and pb tunnel keeps a permanent address with your own domain, on every plan.
$ tailscale funnel 3000$ pb preview 3000
$ pb tunnel create api --port 3000Taildrop sends files between your own devices, into Downloads. Tailscale has no environment variables or config sync.
pb send puts files in the other machine's Inbox, resuming if the connection drops. ENV delivers encrypted variables to the commands and terminals that need them, and config sync keeps settings the same everywhere from a Git repository.
$ tailscale file cp report.pdf laptop:$ pb send report.pdf --to laptopTailscale's policy file (grants, ACLs, groups, tags) and its clients for phones are mature and cover whole companies.
Paperboat has its own policy file with groups, tags and deny rules, and a command that explains any decision. It governs what people may do on machines, not a network. If you need subnet routes, exit nodes or policy for phones, Tailscale is the stronger choice.
Every answer in the Tailscale column carries a number that links to the page of theirs that says it. Put a second tool beside it
A shell on your machine that you can leave and come back to.
Run one command on another machine and get its output and exit code.
Use ssh and the tools built on it, without managing keys or opening ports.
Send a file to a machine without setting anything up.
The secrets your programs need, delivered to the machine that runs them.
The same settings on every machine, from a repository you control.
A public link to a port on your machine, for as long as you need it.
A public address for a service that stays the same.
Your machines reach each other's ports without exposing them.
Who could read your traffic on the way.
Working with other people, and deciding who may do what.
Which parts you can run on your own servers.
Where it runs.
How you pay, and what is free.
What each product does, from its own documentation, as of November 2026. “No” means its documentation describes no such feature. Found something out of date? The other product's page wins; tell us and we fix ours.
tailscale.com/pricing, November 2026
Yes. They don't conflict: Paperboat uses its own private names, and you can keep Tailscale for the rest of your network.
Not a general one. Your machines reach each other privately, but Paperboat doesn't route whole subnets or carry phones' traffic; it connects the machines you install it on.
Yes, between your own devices, and directly when the network allows; relays only forward encrypted traffic. Public links end TLS at Paperboat's edge.
Install Paperboat here, then on a second machine. Free for personal use, no card needed.
$ curl -fsSL https://get.pprbt.dev/install | bash > irm https://get.pprbt.dev/install.ps1 | iex