Open-source alternatives to Openvpn

Algo is a cloud VPN deployment tool and WireGuard orchestrator designed to automate the provisioning and configuration of personal VPN servers across multiple cloud infrastructure providers. It functions as a multi-cloud infrastructure provisioner and a VPN client configuration generator, creating the necessary tunnels and connection profiles for secure device connectivity. The project distinguishes itself by integrating a network ad-blocking DNS server directly into the deployment, filtering advertisements and malicious domains for all connected clients. It further simplifies the onboarding

This project is a portable implementation of the secure shell toolset designed for deployment across diverse operating systems and platforms. It provides a suite of tools for secure remote login and command execution based on the secure shell protocol. The implementation includes a sandboxed server that isolates processes to limit the impact of potential vulnerabilities on the host operating system. It also functions as a cryptographic key manager for generating and storing security keys to replace or supplement password-based authentication. The project covers encrypted file transfer for mo

Octelium is a zero-trust network access platform and identity-aware proxy designed to secure private HTTP, SSH, and SQL resources. It functions as a secure gateway that validates human and workload identities using OIDC, SAML, and FIDO2 passkeys before granting access to internal applications and SaaS APIs. The system is distinguished by its secretless access broker, which injects credentials—such as API keys, passwords, and AWS Sigv4 signatures—at the gateway level so users can access databases and cloud resources without managing secrets. It further specializes in AI gateway administration,

MasterDnsVPN is a DNS tunneling VPN and network censorship bypass tool that encapsulates network traffic within DNS queries to circumvent restrictive firewalls. It functions as a secure tunneling protocol and SOCKS5 proxy server, allowing local application traffic to be routed through a secure tunnel to a remote destination. The project distinguishes itself through a DNS resolver load balancer that distributes traffic across multiple resolvers based on latency and packet loss scoring. It further secures and masks traffic using symmetric payload encryption—supporting ChaCha20, AES-GCM, and XOR

dsvpn is a point-to-point virtual private network tool that establishes encrypted tunnels between two specific endpoints. It functions as a network driver utility that routes raw operating system traffic through a virtual interface for encapsulation and secure transmission. The project distinguishes itself by encapsulating IP packets within TCP streams, allowing secure connections to bypass restrictive network firewalls and filters that block non-standard protocols. It uses symmetric encryption with pre-shared secret keys to authenticate participants and protect data transmission. The softwa

ZeroTierOne is a software-defined networking engine that creates virtual local area networks by emulating Ethernet switches across distributed devices. It functions as a peer-to-peer platform, establishing encrypted tunnels directly between endpoints to bypass the need for centralized gateways or hub-and-spoke architectures. The system distinguishes itself through a decentralized approach to network discovery and identity management. By utilizing a distributed hash table and public key infrastructure, it authenticates devices and maps virtual addresses to physical endpoints without relying on

Sovereign is a self-hosted cloud orchestrator and infrastructure-as-code toolkit designed to establish personal data sovereignty. It provides a suite of automation scripts to deploy a private cloud infrastructure consisting of open-source services for data storage, communication, and web hosting on private hardware. The project focuses on the independent management of digital assets through the deployment of private email servers, git hosting, and file synchronization systems. It distinguishes itself by automating the full stack of server administration, from initial Linux server automation t

Ockam is an end-to-end encryption framework and distributed identity provider designed to establish secure communication between applications and devices. It provides a secure network overlay that utilizes cryptographic identities and attribute-based access control to implement zero trust network access. The project distinguishes itself through metadata-driven multi-hop routing and a pluggable transport layer, allowing encrypted traffic to move across diverse network topologies without requiring virtual IP overlays. It specifically enables secure tunneling for legacy applications by wrapping

EternalTerminal is a persistent SSH remote shell and secure remote terminal. It functions as a TCP connection manager that automatically restores shell sessions after network disconnects, ensuring a continuous connection between a client and server. The project enables the maintenance of a persistent remote shell, allowing users to resume active sessions and recover terminal states immediately after a network failure or manual reconnection. This ensures that long-running processes and scripts on a remote server continue executing even when the local client loses its connection. The system pr

udp2raw is a network tunneling tool designed to bypass firewalls and obfuscate UDP traffic. It wraps UDP packets in alternative headers and utilizes raw socket networking to move data through networks that otherwise block or throttle UDP traffic. The project distinguishes itself by simulating TCP connections, mimicking the three-way handshake and sequence numbering to trick firewalls into treating UDP streams as TCP traffic. It further stabilizes these connections through heartbeat-driven port rotation, which automatically switches ports to recover sessions after detected failures. The tool

Teleport is a zero-trust access platform designed to provide secure, identity-based connectivity to servers, databases, and Kubernetes clusters. It functions as a centralized gateway that replaces static credentials with short-lived, identity-bound cryptographic certificates, effectively eliminating the need for traditional VPNs and long-term secret exposure. The platform distinguishes itself by orchestrating access through a unified control plane that maps external identity provider claims to granular, role-based infrastructure permissions. It enforces security through mutual TLS gateways an

gost is a multi-protocol proxy tunnel and secure tunneling server designed to route network traffic through encrypted connections. It functions as a traffic obfuscation gateway and a transparent proxy server capable of intercepting TCP and UDP traffic at the IP level. The project also includes a virtual network interface manager for creating TUN and TAP devices to intercept operating system packets. The system distinguishes itself through a chain-based request routing model, allowing traffic to pass through an ordered sequence of proxy nodes. It provides extensive transport-layer encapsulatio

OpenWrt is a modular Linux distribution designed for resource-constrained networking hardware. It functions as a comprehensive network routing platform, providing a complete build environment that allows users to generate custom firmware images for a wide variety of embedded processor architectures. By utilizing a standardized cross-compilation toolchain and a package-based ecosystem, it enables the creation of tailored operating systems for specific hardware deployments. The project distinguishes itself through a hardware abstraction layer that normalizes interactions across diverse chipsets

This project is a comprehensive computer networking textbook and instructional resource. It serves as a technical guide for the design and implementation of network layers, protocols, and hardware architecture, covering the spectrum from physical links to application-layer protocols. The content provides a detailed study of standards for congestion control, reliable data delivery, and internetwork routing. It includes specialized technical material on network security, public-key infrastructure, and the operation of modern cloud infrastructure and data centers. The material covers a broad ra

Nebula is a scalable, decentralized overlay networking tool designed to create secure, encrypted peer-to-peer connections between distributed hosts. By utilizing a certificate-based identity authority, it enables the construction of private communication fabrics across disparate physical infrastructures, such as multiple cloud providers or on-premises data centers, without requiring central authentication servers. The project distinguishes itself through a zero-trust architecture that enforces granular, policy-driven firewall filtering based on certificate-derived group memberships. It facili

Sliver is a command and control framework designed for adversary emulation and security assessment operations. It provides a centralized platform for managing remote systems, enabling security professionals to coordinate multi-operator sessions and maintain persistent, secure communication channels across diverse network environments. The framework distinguishes itself through its focus on stealth and infrastructure flexibility. It utilizes dynamic payload obfuscation to generate unique binaries and supports in-memory execution to minimize disk artifacts. Communication is secured through mutu

CrowdSec is a collaborative, distributed security engine designed for threat detection and infrastructure protection. It functions as an intrusion detection system that parses logs and network traffic to identify malicious patterns, utilizing a bucket-based threshold detection model to aggregate events and trigger alerts. The platform is built on a modular architecture that includes a centralized local API server for managing security signals and a relational database for persistent storage of remediation decisions. What distinguishes the project is its decoupled enforcement model, which offl

This project is an Android VPN client and privacy-focused network tool. It serves as a secure tunneling application designed to encrypt internet traffic and mask IP addresses on Android devices. The application provides mobile privacy protection by routing network traffic through a secure VPN infrastructure. It enables remote network access and secure connectivity for public Wi-Fi usage to mask device identity and location.

NATS Server is a high-performance, lightweight messaging system designed for cloud-native applications, edge computing, and distributed microservices. It functions as a distributed publish-subscribe broker that routes messages using hierarchical, dot-separated subject strings, enabling decoupled communication between services without requiring centralized broker lookups. The system supports core messaging patterns including asynchronous publish-subscribe, request-reply, and load-balanced queue processing. The platform distinguishes itself through a decentralized architecture that eliminates t

Awesome Tunneling is a curated directory of technologies designed to facilitate secure connectivity between distributed devices and local services. It serves as a comprehensive resource for identifying tools that enable remote access, private network creation, and the exposure of local environments to the public internet. The collection focuses on solutions that bypass network address translation and firewall restrictions through techniques such as reverse proxy tunneling, overlay network infrastructure, and peer-to-peer connectivity. It categorizes resources based on their ability to establi

Shadowsocks-rss is an RSS feed generator and version tracker designed to automate the distribution of update notifications and download links for ShadowsocksR clients. It functions as a distribution system that monitors specific software branches to ensure encrypted proxy clients can track the latest stable releases. The project focuses on automated release tracking for network obfuscation software, publishing structured XML feeds that provide version notifications and direct download links for various client versions. The system supports software release monitoring and the distribution of u

Excelize is a library for reading and writing spreadsheet files in the Office Open XML format. It provides a comprehensive suite of tools for programmatically creating, modifying, and analyzing workbooks, worksheets, and cell data, ensuring compatibility across various office software suites through structured XML serialization. The library distinguishes itself with a built-in formula calculation engine that evaluates complex mathematical and logical expressions directly against workbook data. It also features a memory-mapped streaming architecture, which allows for the efficient processing o

Netmaker is a platform for automating and managing virtual mesh networks built on WireGuard. It functions as a centralized control plane that orchestrates encrypted, peer-to-peer tunnels across distributed infrastructure, including cloud environments, on-premise data centers, and containerized clusters. By automating the configuration of routing tables and access policies, the system enables secure, private connectivity between diverse devices and services without requiring manual network administration. The platform distinguishes itself through its focus on zero-trust network access and soft

ShadowsocksR is a Python-based implementation of a SOCKS5 proxy server designed to tunnel network traffic through encrypted connections. It functions as an encrypted network tunnel that obfuscates internet traffic to circumvent network restrictions and firewalls. The project includes security hardening features to protect the proxy server from unauthorized access, specifically by blocking IP addresses that attempt brute force credential attacks. The server manages bidirectional TCP and UDP traffic and can be executed as a background system daemon to maintain persistent connectivity. It suppo

This project is a privacy-focused VPN manager and WireGuard client application designed to establish encrypted tunnels that mask user IP addresses and activity. It focuses on maintaining anonymity through a system that supports account creation without personal identifying information. The application distinguishes itself with advanced privacy tools, including a multi-hop orchestrator for routing traffic through multiple sequential servers and a network traffic obfuscator that uses Shadowsocks, TCP, and QUIC to bypass deep packet inspection and censorship. It also implements quantum-resistant

sing-box is a management script and universal proxy orchestrator designed to install, configure, and manage network proxy servers. It provides a command-line interface to deploy diverse proxy protocols—including TUIC, Trojan, and Hysteria2—within a single network engine. The project features an automated setup tool for the REALITY protocol to obfuscate network traffic and a system for provisioning and renewing security certificates to ensure encrypted connections. It also includes a Linux network optimizer to implement BBR congestion control and other system-level tweaks for improved throughp

Olares is a comprehensive suite of self-hosted identity, storage, AI, and orchestration services designed for private infrastructure management. It functions as a Kubernetes home server orchestrator, enabling the deployment of containerized applications, AI models, and GPU resources on local hardware to replace third-party cloud services. The platform distinguishes itself through a combination of self-hosted AI infrastructure for running large language models and image generators, alongside a decentralized identity manager that uses cryptographic keys and OIDC for trustless authentication. It