Nebula
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Nebula is a scalable overlay networking tool that connects computers anywhere in the world, running on Linux, OSX, Windows, iOS, and Android.
tun:
use_offloads: true
listen:
udp_offloads: true
routines: 4
tun:
pin_threads: true
pin_threads_key: pid
nebula ctl print-cert
# In config.yml — omit or set to true to enable (the default)
listen:
rebind_on_network_change: true
# In nebula config.yml firewall section
firewall:
inbound:
- port: any
proto: any
group: trusted
local_cidr: 10.20.0.0/24
tunnels:
drop_inactive: true
docker pull nebulaoss/nebula
make service
sudo nebula -service install
lighthouse:
dns:
host: '0.0.0.0'
port: 53
unsafe_routes:
- interface: neb0
subnet: '192.168.1.0/24'
Summary
Nebula is an open-source overlay networking tool that creates a mutually authenticated, encrypted mesh between hosts anywhere on the internet, using certificates built on the Noise Protocol Framework rather than a central VPNVPNA virtual private network, an encrypted tunnel between devices or networks. It carries traffic across another network as though the endpoints had a private connection. gateway. It runs as a binary or system service installed via package managers or Docker on Linux, Windows, macOS, and FreeBSD, with mobile clients for iOS and Android, and can be embedded as a library for programmatic control. It is aimed at network and platform engineers who need to connect distributed servers, laptops, and edge devices, from small fleets up to tens of thousands of nodes, without managing a traditional VPN concentrator. Its README describes it as a scalable peer-to-peer alternative to conventional overlay VPNsVPNsA virtual private network, an encrypted tunnel between devices or networks. It carries traffic across another network as though the endpoints had a private connection., combining security groups, tunneling, and certificate-based trust in one system. First committed in 2019 and maintained by 95 contributors, it remains under active development, with a release 29 days ago.
Nebula is a scalable overlay networking tool that connects computers anywhere in the world, running on Linux, OSX, Windows, iOS, and Android.
How Nebula helps
Which of my hosts can reach each other once the mesh is up?
every node holds a certificate signed by its own certificate authority and mutually authenticates with any peer it tries to handshake with, so reachability is settled by certificate trust rather than a central gateway's routing table
Which machines are allowed to talk to which, and on what ports?
firewall rules are defined per host using group and CIDR membership pulled from each certificate, so the answer is enforced locally at every node rather than looked up from a central policy server
What happens to traffic when a laptop moves from wifi to a wired connection?
the listener rebinds and re-queries the lighthouse automatically when the underlay network changes, so the tunnel re-establishes instead of hanging on a stale address
Is a given certificate actually trusted by the group I think it belongs in?
the certificate encodes IP and group membership at signing time, and every peer checks incoming handshakes against its own copy of the signing certificate authority before allowing a tunnel
Which idle connections are still holding resources on a host?
tunnels can be set to drop automatically after a period of inactivity, so a long-lived but unused peer connection gets reclaimed instead of sitting open indefinitely
Languages
Command line
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Score card
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Shipping velocity releases a month, last 12 months
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Documentation quality release-notes rubric, 0–100
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Breaking-change discipline how rarely a release breaks users, and notice given
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Maintenance risk quiet time against its own cadence, maintainers
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Innovation & surface new capabilities, API and MCP surface
- Community health
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Contributor trend distinct committers, this year against last
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Maintainer concentration bus factor now against a year ago
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Issue backlog trend issues closed per issue opened, 12 months
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Responsiveness median time to a maintainer’s first reply
Nine scores for Nebula, each built from the releases, notes and API history this site tracks — and, on Researcher and Business, where it stands among every measured tool in its category and how that has moved.
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Blank means never measured; nothing here is a filled-in zero.
Peer standings are included with Researcher and Business. See how this tool ranks against its competitors, using data we don't publish anywhere else.
See plans →Each score is 0–100 on a published rubric, derived from data this site already shows. A dimension we cannot measure says so — it is never scored 0 and never enters a rank.
How this is scored
- Shipping velocity — releases a month over the last 12 months, on a log scale where 16 a month scores 100. Needs 3 releases in the window.
- Documentation quality — the release-notes rubric published on the analytics page, unchanged.
- Breaking-change discipline — the share of releases carrying a breaking change (none scores 100, half or more scores 0). Only projects that label breaking changes are measured: a clean record cannot be told from an unlabelled one.
- Maintenance risk — quiet time measured against the tool's own release cadence (quiet longer than 90 days and three typical gaps scores 0), plus the number of active maintainers and whether contributors are growing, where known. Higher is lower risk.
- Innovation & surface — new capabilities in the feature ledger this year, API and MCP operations added, and the share of commits that are features: the mean of whichever we hold.
- Community health (open-source tools only) — each is a direction, not a size: contributors this year against last, the bus factor now against a year ago, and issues closed per issue opened, where steady scores 50, doubled 100 and halved 0; plus the median time to a maintainer's first reply (an hour scores about 100, a month or more 0). A commercial card has no repository and carries none of the four.
- Documented delivery (commercial tools) — when a vendor's documented new capabilities have slowed against its own baseline, that counts against the overall standing as heavily as two low dimensions. Steady delivery, or too little history to judge, leaves the standing alone; it is never a sixth score.
- Open-source tools are scored on repository signals; commercial tools on their published changelog. Ranks compare tools within one category and one profile and need at least five measured peers; the overall standing needs three ranked dimensions. Best-in-breed or consolidator is a shape, not a quality, and is never scored.
Release-note detail over time
See how much detail Nebula puts in its release notes, quarter by quarter, and compare it with tracked tools in the same category. This history uses up to ten retained, reviewed notes per tool; sparse or blank older quarters may reflect that limit.
Checking release-note history…
Releases
16 entries
No entries match these filters.
- October 20261
- July 20261
- February 20261
- January 20261
- December 20251
- July 20251
- September 20241
- May 20241
- December 20231
- May 20231
- June 20221
- November 20211
- May 20211
- September 20201
- April 20201
- January 20201
Project health
Issue, contributor and maintainer activity in slackhq/nebula, 2023-10 – 2026-09, as of 2026-09-25. Twelve-month figures first; the trend lines run the whole window.
- Contributors 18 +3 vs prior 12 months
- Maintainers 3 +0 joined · −2 left, last 12 months
- Bus factor 2 committers behind half the commits
- Community-filed 88% of issues opened, last 12 months
- Median time to close 53 days first maintainer reply 6.8 hours
- Open backlog 55 of 624 issues ever filed
- Issues opened / month 1 · 2 communitymaintainers
- Open backlog 55
- Contributors / month 5
- Commits / month 11
- Stars 18,350
- bugs 3%
- other 97%
Counts from the project's public repository and git history; no individuals are identified. Maintainers are the committers covering 80% of the last year's commits. how we measure this
Libraries its release ships
What its latest release locks, checked against known advisories.None of its release's images build from a lockfile we can read.
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