juanfont/headscale

An open source, self-hosted implementation of the Tailscale control server

44.6k stars · 2.6k forks · Go

Caution

Caution: one person wrote most of the recent commits.

Why

One person wrote 87% of human commits in the last year, so the project depends on them continuing. (source 1, source 2)

What would change this

A second person takes a substantial share of commits.
Partly checked: maintenance (Commit counts are estimated: the commit sample stops before the window start, so GitHub's totals were scaled by the sampled bot share.)

Maintenance

Partial

Active

Human commits, 30 days: 187
Human commits, 90 days: 282
Human commits, 365 days: 1.1k
Bot share of commits, 365 days: 3%
Last commit: Oct 13, 2026 (1 day ago)
Last human commit: Oct 13, 2026 (1 day ago)
Authors, 90 days: 24
Last release: Oct 13, 2026 (1 day ago)
Median PR merge time: 5 days

Responsiveness: of 27 recent issues, 85% got a maintainer reply. Median first response: 8 days.

Commit counts are estimated: the commit sample stops before the window start, so GitHub's totals were scaled by the sampled bot share.

Sources: Commits, Releases, Merged pull requests, Issues

People

Complete

Owner: Personal account
Commits sampled: 483 since Oct 14, 2025
Authors for half of commits: 1
Authors for 80% of commits: 1
Contributors: 254

Top committers

kradalby: 87% of commits
nblock: 4% of commits
lukas-runge: 1% of commits
iSerganov: 1% of commits
igorbernstein: 1% of commits

Shares come from the newest sampled commits, since the commit sample is capped.

Sources: Commits, Contributors

Stars

Complete

Organic, confidence high

Bars show stars gained each week. Orange bars overlap a burst.

Bursts

Jun 13, 2021 to Jun 15, 2021: about 56 more stars than usual, peak 42 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in forks.
Jun 29, 2021 to Jun 30, 2021: about 68 more stars than usual, peak 59 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in forks.
Sep 17, 2021 to Sep 26, 2021: about 813 more stars than usual, peak 291 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a Hacker News post, a jump in forks.
Oct 1, 2021 to Oct 1, 2021: about 21 more stars than usual, peak 26 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in forks, a jump in issues and pull requests.
May 4, 2022 to May 6, 2022: about 88 more stars than usual, peak 55 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in forks.
Jul 2, 2022 to Jul 4, 2022: about 311 more stars than usual, peak 147 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in forks.
Aug 15, 2022 to Aug 21, 2022: about 567 more stars than usual, peak 192 in one day, a shape we can't classify. Outside explanation: a jump in forks, a jump in issues and pull requests.
Dec 10, 2023 to Dec 12, 2023: about 138 more stars than usual, peak 114 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in forks, a jump in issues and pull requests.
Mar 5, 2025 to Mar 6, 2025: about 72 more stars than usual, peak 69 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in forks, a jump in issues and pull requests.
Apr 2, 2025 to Apr 4, 2025: about 418 more stars than usual, peak 253 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a Hacker News post, a jump in forks.
May 3, 2025 to May 9, 2025: about 521 more stars than usual, peak 178 in one day, a shape we can't classify. Outside explanation: a jump in forks, a jump in issues and pull requests.
Oct 28, 2025 to Oct 29, 2025: about 245 more stars than usual, peak 202 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in forks, a jump in issues and pull requests.
Feb 11, 2026 to Feb 12, 2026: about 140 more stars than usual, peak 129 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in forks, a jump in issues and pull requests.
May 22, 2026 to May 30, 2026: about 610 more stars than usual, peak 133 in one day, a shape we can't classify. Outside explanation: a jump in forks, a jump in issues and pull requests.
Jul 1, 2026 to Jul 4, 2026: about 283 more stars than usual, peak 121 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in forks, a jump in issues and pull requests.
Jul 9, 2026 to Jul 10, 2026: about 196 more stars than usual, peak 185 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in forks, a jump in issues and pull requests.

7 stars GitHub has since removed (tracked since Oct 13, 2026).

Anyone can buy stars for any repo; bursts alone don't prove the owner did.

The star history looks organic.

Sources: How star history is analyzed

Risk

Complete

Flags

No risk flags.

License

Now: BSD-3-Clause (OSI-approved)
A year ago: BSD-3-Clause (OSI-approved)

Packages

github.com/juanfont/headscale (GO): latest v0.29.5, published Oct 13, 2026
Advisories for the latest version: none listed

Package and advisory data: deps.dev and OSV.

OpenSSF Scorecard: 5.3 out of 10 (via deps.dev).

Sources: GitHub: juanfont/headscale, deps.dev: Go github.com/juanfont/headscale

Badge

Add this to a README to show the current verdict:

[![RepoRadar](https://reporadar.ai/juanfont/headscale/badge.svg)](https://reporadar.ai/juanfont/headscale)

Earlier verdicts

Oct 14, 2026: Caution
Oct 13, 2026: Caution
Oct 13, 2026: Caution

Computed 15 hours ago · method 2026.10.2