Besides the company that operates it, what is the big difference between Tailscale and Cloudflare tunnels? I've seen Tailscale mentioned frequently but I'm not quite sure what it gets for me. If it's more like a VPN, is it possible to use on an arbitrary device like a library kiosk?

I don't use Cloudflare tunnels for anything.

But Tailscale is just a VPN (and by VPN, I mean: Something more like "Connect to the office networ" than I do "NordVPN"). It provides a private network on top of the public network, so that member devices of that VPN can interact together privately.

Which is pretty great: It's a simple and free/cheap way for me to use my pocket supercomputer to access my stuff at home from anywhere, with reasonable security.

But because it happens at the network level, you (generally) need to own the machines that it is configured on. That tends to exclude using it in meaningful ways with things like library kiosks.

You can self host a tailscale network entirely on your own, without making a single call to Tailscale Inc.

Your cloudflare tunnel availability depends on Cloudflare’s mood of the day.