Tailscale vs FRCBatteryReader
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.
FRCBatteryReader
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The FRC Battery Tag Reader is a companion utility designed for FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) teams to streamline battery tracking and usage logging. Using NFC technology, this app reads and writes structured JSON records stored on NFC tags attached to robot batteries. With this tool, teams can: • Read battery information directly from NFC tags in the standardized JSON format. • Write new records (such as charging events or robot usage sessions) back to the tag. • Maintain history logs with a fixed number of entries, ensuring consistent data for every battery. • Export logs for analysis and recordkeeping. Hardware Requirements This app requires special hardware to function. It is designed to work with NFC tags written and managed by a compatible ESP32-based RFID system (see project repository for firmware and hardware details). Standard iOS devices with NFC can run the app, but the tags themselves must be prepared with the provided firmware and hardware setup. Open Source This project is fully open source! You can view the source code, contribute, or adapt it for your own team on GitHub FRC-RFID-Battery-Reader https://github.com/sikaxn/FRC-RFID-Battery-Reader/tree/main
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: FRCBatteryReader at every 6 days against Tailscale's fortnightly. Tailscale's advantage is chart position (#71 vs unranked) and device support (3 vs 1). On price, ads, in-app purchases and iOS requirement 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 ships an update fortnightly, FRCBatteryReader every 6 days. The most recent releases landed on October 18, 2026 and October 5, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Tailscale | FRCBatteryReader |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.4 (747 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 60.9% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 747 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Fortnightly | Every 6 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Freemium | — |
| Best chart rank | #71 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Apple TV — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 16.6 — better | 17.6 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 29 MB | 7 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Tailscale Inc. | Jinze Zhou |
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
FRCBatteryReader
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Tailscale
No in-app purchases
FRCBatteryReader
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Tailscale free?
Is FRCBatteryReader free?
Do Tailscale or FRCBatteryReader have ads?
Which is updated more often, Tailscale or FRCBatteryReader?
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