Tailscale vs Aqua Security Pricing (2026)
How do these two stack up on price? Here's what each one costs, what you get, and where the value sits.
| Tailscale | Aqua Security | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | $8/mo | Custom |
| Number of plans | 4 | 3 |
| Free plan | — | |
| Free trial | ||
| Pricing model | per-seat | custom |
Personal
- Unlimited user devices
- Up to 6 users
- Up to 3 ACL groups
- Up to 50 tagged resources to start
- 1,000 mins per month for ephemeral resources
- Access nearly all of Tailscale's features
- Try SSH and Kubernetes features
Standard
- Unlimited users
- Deploy users and groups with SCIM
- Up to 10 ACL groups
- 1,000 mins per month for ephemeral resources
- Configure Tailscale with MDM tools
- Device posture integrations with MDM, EDR, XDR
- Advanced user roles for billing, IT, auditors, and more
Premium
Popular- Up to 300 ACL groups
- 10,000 mins per month for ephemeral resources
- Just-in-time access to resources
- Advanced Tailscale SSH
- Network flow logs
- Log streaming
- Regional routing and traffic steering
- Priority support
Enterprise
- Custom device quantities and limits
- Solutions Engineer consultation and implementation assistance
- Custom MSA & SLAs
- Premium support with dedicated professional services
- Custom pricing and bundling to meet your organization's needs and budget
- Pay by invoice
Dev Security
- Code repo discovery and code scanning
- Vulnerability and risk scanning of container images
- Dynamic Threat Analysis (DTA) in a secure sandbox to detect sophisticated malware
- Open source health scoring
- Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) scanning
- Pipeline security with static pipeline analysis
- CI/CD posture management
- Integrity checks of code throughout the lifecycle
- Automated next-gen SBOM generation and analysis
- CI/CD, registry and SCM toolchain integrity and governance
Cloud Security
- Auto-discovery, inventory and risk assessment across cloud accounts
- Agentless cloud workload scanning
- Support of AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle and Alibaba Cloud environments
- Hundreds of configuration checks across compute, database, storage and identity resources
- Out-of-the-box compliance reporting
- eBPF-based real-time detection of malicious behavior
- Drift prevention to ensure immutability of workloads at runtime
- Advanced malware protection with malware blocking and deletion
- Service identity-based segmentation (firewall)
- Event audit trails, incidents view, and response policies
Platform
- End-to-end visibility across the entire SDLC
- Risk-based prioritization and insights
- Contextualized risk scoring
- Built-in compliance and custom reporting
- Role-based access control (RBAC)
- Broad integrations with third-party tools
Tailscale vs Aqua Security FAQ
- Which one is cheaper?
- One or both use custom pricing, so it depends on your specific needs.
- Can I use either one for free?
- Tailscale has a free plan. Aqua Security doesn't — though they do offer a free trial.
- How do they charge?
- Different approach here. Tailscale uses per-seat pricing, while Aqua Security goes with custom. That changes the math depending on your team size and usage.
- Which one is a better deal?
- Depends on what you need. Tailscale: Tailscale sits mid-pack compared to full-blown enterprise VPN/ZTNA vendors like Zscaler or Palo Alto, but it's pricier per-seat than raw WireGuard or DIY mesh setups — you're paying for the managed control plane and ease of setup. They're clearly courting devops-savvy teams who'd rather pay a little than manage their own coordination server. Aqua Security: With zero public pricing and a demo-gated sales process, Aqua positions itself as an enterprise-grade player competing with the likes of Wiz, Palo Alto Prisma Cloud, and Orca — not a budget tool for small teams. They're chasing organizations with complex, multi-cloud workloads who need dedicated security engineering, not a DevOps team bolting on a scanner.
Still deciding? See the best Tailscale alternatives or the best Aqua Security alternatives, ranked with verified pricing.
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