RYSE vs Tailscale
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
RYSE
Control your window shades remotely using your iPhone. Create custom groups and automated routines for enhanced convenience and energy savings. Works with RYSE SmartShade, SmartBridge, and AXIS Gear.
- Remote shade control via iPhone
- Create shade groups
- Automated routines
- Works with RYSE SmartShade
- Works with RYSE SmartBridge
- Backwards compatible with AXIS Gear
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RYSE lets you control your window shades from the comfort of your iPhone and create groups and routines for added convenience and automation. Compatible with RYSE SmartShade and SmartBridge, and backwards compatible with AXIS Gear. After receiving your RYSE or AXIS products, download the free app for a smarter home that saves you time and energy.
Tailscale
Securely connect devices, users, and workloads with a mesh VPN built on WireGuard. It brings identity to network access, enabling Zero Trust principles across diverse environments. Modernize your network for homelabs, businesses, and cloud infrastructure.
- Secure mesh networking
- Identity-based access control
- Zero Trust security
- WireGuard-based VPN
- Homelab and business VPN
- Cloud and workload connectivity
- Hardware-agnostic overlay network
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Securely connect people, workloads, and even AI agents to anything on the internet with Tailscale, the secure connectivity platform built on WireGuard®. Tailscale brings identity to the network layer so you can control access based on users, groups, tags, and devices instead of IP addresses, applying Zero Trust principles end-to-end across every environment. Tailscale transforms your existing network from a legacy hub and spoke model to a modern, lightweight, and responsive mesh networking architecture that eliminates single points of failure and delivers better performance, scalability, and security for your end users, devices, and remote resources. Tailscale can be used for your Homelab VPN and connectivity, Business VPN, Workload Connectivity across clouds, Kubernetes clusters, regions, and environments, Privileged Access Management (PAM), Edge & IoT, CI/CD, and Securing AI – all on the same platform. Replace legacy VPNs, connect workloads across on-prem and cloud infrastructure providers, power Zero Trust initiatives, and make remote access secure by simplifying software-defined networking and security operations. Modernize your home, your organization, and your enterprise networking at scale with Tailscale. Tailscale is hardware-agnostic, so you can make decisions about your hardware independently from decisions about your network. Tailscale creates an overlay network, using your existing network, so you can incrementally deploy Tailscale without needing new network switches or to change your network architecture. Tailscale integrates with 100+ technologies and dozens of identity providers, and is available on a wide range of platforms — including Apple’s macOS, iOS, and tvOS — so you can securely connect from wherever you work.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Tailscale at 4.4 against RYSE's 3.0. Tailscale also leads on review sentiment (61% vs 24%) and ratings volume (747 vs 33). RYSE's advantage is monetization model (free vs freemium). On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Tailscale holds the better App Store score, 4.4 against 3.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Tailscale has 747 ratings behind it against 33, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 24% of RYSE's written reviews are positive against 61% of Tailscale's.
RYSE ships an update monthly, Tailscale fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on October 7, 2026 and October 11, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | RYSE | Tailscale |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.0 (33 ratings) | 4.4 (747 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 24.3% of reviews | 61.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 33 | 747 — better |
| Update frequency | Monthly | Fortnightly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free — better | Freemium |
| Best chart rank | — | #68 — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, Apple TV — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.1 | 16.6 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 127 MB | 29 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | RYSE INC. | Tailscale Inc. |
Customer experience
RYSE
Tailscale
User reviews
RYSE
From 33 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Easy installation and setup process
- 🎨 Sleek and modern hardware design
- ⚙️ Works well with HomeKit integration
- 🔧 Responsive customer support (when available)
- 💡 Innovative concept for retrofitting existing blinds
Room to improve
- 🐛 Frequent app crashes and freezes
- 📡 Unreliable Bluetooth connectivity issues
- ⚠️ Requires separate Smart Bridge for full functionality
- 🔄 Constant need to recalibrate devices
- ❌ Missing native Alexa/Google Home compatibility
Tailscale
From 747 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Easy to set up and use
- 🔒 Secure remote access
- 👍 Convenient for accessing home network
- 👍 Seamless connectivity between devices
- 🚀 Powerful networking features
Room to improve
- 🔋 Significant battery drain
- 🐛 Connectivity issues and bugs
- 🐛 Unreliable performance
- 🐛 Broken functionality after updates
Bugs and requests
RYSE
Reported bugs
16 issues- App crashes on launch and during pairing
- Bluetooth fails to connect on first attempt
- Devices disconnect and require constant reconnection
- Firmware update failures stuck at 0%
- App freezes during setup and configuration
Show 11 moreShow fewer
- Shade status not reflecting actual position
- Schedules randomly stop working or drift in time
- Devices disappear from app randomly
- Routines fail to execute properly
- Groups functionality broken or unavailable
- Object detection false positives causing shades to stop
- Calibration loops that never complete
- App becomes unresponsive after closing and reopening
- Multiple devices not responding in automation routines
- Chain connector disconnection issues
- Motor skipping and getting out of sync
Requested features
12 requests- Native Alexa and Google Home voice control without Smart Bridge
- Built-in scheduling without requiring additional hardware
- Instant routine testing and triggering
- Sunrise/sunset-based automation options
- Fine-grained manual shade position control
Show 7 moreShow fewer
- iPad and landscape mode support
- Widget for home screen control
- Automatic status refresh on app open
- Firmware update enforcement and visibility
- Group control functionality
- Weather-based automation triggers
- Faster Bluetooth connection times
Tailscale
Reported bugs
4 issues- Inability to connect or authenticate
- Exit node feature not working as expected
- Inconsistent behavior when switching networks
- App getting stuck in a loading state
Requested features
5 requests- On-demand VPN connection
- Ability to switch between multiple accounts
- More granular control over exit nodes
- Integration with other networking tools
- Dark mode option
In-app purchases
RYSE
No in-app purchases
Tailscale
No in-app purchases
