NordLayer vs Tailscale

NordLayer

Clients for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android plus a browser extension, split tunnelling, dedicated IPs, custom DNS, site-to-site links to AWS, Google Cloud and IBM Cloud, always-on and 40-plus service locations cover what my travelling staff and freelancers need, and the help centre states the service provides no port forwarding so no incoming connections pass through. What holds it back: the pages never name the VPN protocol itself, the locations stay a count rather than a named list, and I found no public information on clientless browser access for contractors or peer-to-peer connections with relays.

Tailscale

A WireGuard mesh with peer-to-peer connections, encrypted relays as fallback, and NAT traversal that needs no firewall changes or open ports — which is exactly what keeps a freelancer connected from a hotel lobby. Subnet routers bring whole client networks in, clients exist for every platform my travelling people carry, and default-deny grants mean a freelancer reaches one project system and nothing else. We found no public information on always-on auto-connect, on clientless browser access for contractors who cannot install a client, or on the named locations of the relay regions.

NordLayer

Single sign-on with Entra ID, Google, Okta, JumpCloud and OneLogin, provisioning that automatically adds and removes members, MFA, and device posture checks feeding in from CrowdStrike, SentinelOne and Jamf mean a freelancer's access can end with the contract and a jailbroken laptop gets blocked, with per-resource permissions to keep each contractor on their one project system. I found no public information on just-in-time or time-limited access with approval, least-privilege defaults, or policies kept as code.

Tailscale

Login is outsourced to whatever identity provider we already use, with MFA inherited from it, and SCIM group sync means a departing freelancer loses access the moment I remove them from the directory — access ending with the contract is a settings change, not a project. Policies are default-deny grants naming the exact resource a group may touch, device posture can pull attributes from EDR and MDM tools, and just-in-time access with regular re-authentication is documented.

NordLayer

The Control Panel shows six activity types including connection sessions with times, devices and servers, an admin action log, failed logins and download-protection events, held 60 days regardless of plan with CSV download, and Control Panel and connection logs can be forwarded to CrowdStrike's SIEM — enough for my external provider to answer who touched what. The catches that matter: the log can lag up to 24 hours and is not real-time, retention is capped at 60 days rather than a year, and I found no public information on flow logs per resource or a documented log schema.

Tailscale

Configuration audit logs ship on every plan with ninety days' retention, network flow logs and streaming to named SIEMs including Splunk and Datadog sit on the upper tiers, webhooks exist, and every connection logging on both endpoints makes tampering detectable. But the configuration-log retention is capped at ninety days and cannot be configured, and we found no public information on alerts for unusual access or a console view that lets me end a live session.

NordLayer

Set-up in under ten minutes, a three-step gateway creation, 24/7 live chat with average response under a minute, three admin roles with team scoping, and a documented Intune deployment with silent install flags for Windows are what a company with no IT department can actually run. I found no public information on a documented REST API or a Terraform provider, the MDM guidance I could see covers Windows only so my Mac freelancers install by hand, and the MSP material describes a support split rather than a multi-tenant console.

Tailscale

A quickstart gets a first connection in minutes, the API is available on every plan, Jamf and Intune deploy preconfigured clients, and updates can be driven centrally with stable and pre-release tracks — a non-specialist like me can run this without an external provider on speed dial. Admin roles are granular and Terraform and webhooks exist, but we found no public information on a self-hosted edition for production, and managing several organisations through multiple tailnets runs through a contact-sales path.

NordLayer

ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type 2 and a penetration test report exist but only on request, encryption is named as AES-256 or ChaCha20, and the trust page lists 25 controls — reasonable signs, though no report summaries are published. I found no public information on a status page, an availability SLA, a bug bounty or vulnerability disclosure programme, or what happens to connections when the vendor's own service is down, so I cannot verify the reliability claims.

Tailscale

The how-it-works and encryption pages show precisely what the coordination server and relays can see — nothing, for traffic, since private keys never leave the devices — and the network stays up if the coordination server goes down, with relays failing over between regions and client and relay code open source. Independent audits by a named security firm and SOC 2 Type II are stated, but the reports are available on request rather than published, the vendor states plainly there is no bounty program, and we found no public information on a status page or an availability SLA.

NordLayer

The contracting entity and controller is Nord Security Inc. of New York, with nordsec B.V. in Amsterdam named only as an EEA data-protection representative; where account data and logs are hosted is not stated, subprocessors appear as categories with the list available on request, and transfers rely on adequacy decisions or standard contractual clauses. A data processing agreement is linked on the vendor's own pages, which keeps this above the floor, but the chain remains a US company and I found no public information on EU hosting of the control plane or logs.

Tailscale

The contracting entity is a US corporation with New York venue and USD invoices; a data processing agreement exists with standard contractual clauses, an EU representative is appointed, and processing happens in Canada, Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom. We found no public information on EU hosting of the control plane and logs or on subprocessors named with their locations, so this is a mostly non-EU chain with stated safeguards rather than a European one.

NordLayer

The Premium plan is public at $14 per user per month with a dedicated server at $40 per month for site-to-site, an Enterprise offer runs from $6 per user per month with the Lite plan for teams over 200 seats, and billing frequency, VAT treatment, a 14-day money-back guarantee and proration are all stated. The dedicated IP is purchasable through the account but never priced, the Core plan's per-user price is not shown, and the pages do not say which tier single sign-on requires, so I cannot compute a full annual cost from public pages alone.

Tailscale

Personal is $0 free forever, Standard is $8 per user, per month, Premium is $18 per user, per month, and tagged resources beyond the fifty included cost $1 per month each, with taxes excluded and monthly or annual billing stated — enough to sketch what fifty people plus a pile of freelancers would cost. But the Enterprise tier, extra ephemeral minutes and multiple tailnets are contact-sales, and the fee for a chosen payment period is set at checkout, so I cannot compute the real annual bill from public pages alone.