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 in the mid-market sweet spot — cheaper than traditional enterprise VPN solutions and zero-trust vendors like Zscaler, but priced above scrappier open-source alternatives like Headscale. They're clearly targeting dev-forward teams and mid-size companies who want enterprise-grade networking without the enterprise procurement nightmare. Aqua Security: Full-stack cloud-native security with no self-serve entry point screams enterprise-only — they're not competing with Snyk on developer tooling price points or Wiz on PLG motion. Aqua is going after security-mature orgs with real budgets, likely landing in the same deals as Palo Alto Prisma and Wiz at the high end.
Keep tabs on both.
We'll monitor pricing changes for Tailscale and Aqua Security and let you know when something moves.