Tailscale vs Elapse
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
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.
Elapse
Enhance your V5RC competition experience with personalized tools. View upcoming matches in tournament mode and generate detailed scouting reports for your team. This application serves as a comprehensive resource for all V5RC tournament needs.
- Personalized V5RC experience
- Tournament mode for upcoming matches
- ScoutSheets for detailed reports
- Comprehensive V5RC tournament resource
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Elevate your V5RC experience using Elapse. Building on the functionality of existing applications, Elapse adds a level of individual personalization not yet seen before in previous Vex Robotics applications. View your upcoming matches with ease using tournament mode, and share detailed scouting reports with your teammates using ScoutSheets. Elapse is your one stop shop for everything related to V5RC tournaments.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is monetization model: Elapse at free against Tailscale's freemium. Elapse also leads on iOS requirement (13.0 vs 16.6). Tailscale's advantage is ratings volume (747 vs 22) and chart position (#68 vs unranked). On price, rating, review sentiment and update cadence 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.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.4 for Tailscale against 4.3 for Elapse. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Tailscale has 747 ratings behind it against 22, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 61% of Tailscale's written reviews are positive against 67% of Elapse's.
Tailscale ships an update fortnightly, Elapse every 9 days. The most recent releases landed on October 11, 2026 and October 1, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Tailscale | Elapse |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.4 (747 ratings) — better | 4.3 (22 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 61.0% of reviews | 66.7% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 747 — better | 22 |
| Update frequency | Fortnightly | Every 9 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Freemium | Free — better |
| Best chart rank | #68 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Apple TV | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 16.6 | 13.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 29 MB | 55 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Tailscale Inc. | Abdur-Rahman Rana |
Customer experience
Tailscale
Elapse
Bugs and requests
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
Elapse
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Tailscale
No in-app purchases
Elapse
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Tailscale free?
Is Elapse free?
Which has better reviews, Tailscale or Elapse?
Do Tailscale or Elapse have ads?
Which is updated more often, Tailscale or Elapse?
Other comparisons
