--- title: The Best Free Self-Hosted VPN for a Homelab | OpenVPN Blog description: "\"Free and self-hosted\" doesn't have to mean compiling it yourself. What the free tiers actually give you, where they run out, and how to pick between three options." image: https://blog.openvpn.net/hubfs/Hobbyists-1200x630-1-Social-and-OG-Size.png --- - [Blog](https://blog.openvpn.net) - [Zero Trust](https://blog.openvpn.net/tag/zero-trust) - [self-hosted](https://blog.openvpn.net/tag/self-hosted) - [ztna](https://blog.openvpn.net/tag/ztna) # The Best Free Self-Hosted VPN for a Homelab Isn't the One You Compile Yourself Oct 14, 2026 • 12 min read ![](https://blog.openvpn.net/hubfs/Hobbyists-1200x630-1-Social-and-OG-Size.png) Share - - - - The Best Free Self-Hosted VPN for a Homelab | OpenVPN Blog 13:41 By Heather Walters ## What you're getting wrong about remote access in a homelab. There's an assumption baked into most homelab discussions of remote access: that "free and self-hosted" means you compile it yourself, and anything with a company attached is a trial waiting to expire. The first half of that is a legitimate preference. The second half is just wrong, and it costs people a lot of weekends. This post lays out what the free options actually are — including the ones with a company behind them — where each runs out, and how to pick. No trial countdowns, and no pretending the free tier does more than it does. ## Why homelabbers distrust "free" Because it's usually earned. The pattern is familiar: generous free tier, you build your setup on it, then the limits tighten, or the free plan gets grandfathered into something worse, or it disappears at acquisition. Anyone who's been self-hosting for a decade has been moved off a free tier at least once. So the instinct to prefer something you compile from source is a rational response to being burned. Source you've compiled can't be taken away from you. The thing worth separating out is that "has a company behind it" and "will be taken away from you" aren't the same claim. OpenVPN is a slightly odd case here, because the open-source project and the company are both called OpenVPN — the protocol was released in 2002, the company was founded around it, and both still exist. The community edition isn't a crippled version of a commercial product. It's the same project started in 2001; it always was, and it's still GPL. Which means you've got more than two options. [![Subnet Calculator Blog Image CTA ](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/43411546/d6dc0237-1a8c-4671-8c67-4261b3f56777.png)](https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/43411546/d6dc0237-1a8c-4671-8c67-4261b3f56777) ## The four real options ### Option one: Community-edition OpenVPN The [OpenVPN open-source project](https://openvpn.net/community/). No account, no license, no company involvement. You install a package, write config files, run your own certificate authority with EasyRSA or your own tooling, and manage everything by hand or by script. What you get: total control, no vendor relationship at all, and the ability to do genuinely anything the protocol supports. Certificates, MFA, hardware tokens, LDAP — all available. What it costs: your time, and more of it than most people estimate. Certificate authentication is straightforward. Adding TOTP two-factor means writing an authentication script, maintaining a user database, and handling challenge-response state, including replay protection, yourself. We published the actual script so you can judge the effort before committing to it — it's about sixty lines of Python, and it's the kind of sixty lines you own forever. Choose it if: the building is the point. Plenty of homelabs exist so their owner can learn this stuff, and for that purpose the community edition is better than any UI. ### Option two: The free tier of Access Server [Access Server](https://openvpn.net/access-server/) is self-hosted, on hardware you control — a Proxmox guest, a mini PC, a spare box, a cloud VM. Same protocol and the same open-source lineage as the community edition, with the assembly already done: a web admin interface, user and group management, MFA as a checkbox, access control rules in a UI, and client apps for every platform. What you get: the community edition's capabilities without the afternoon of config files, plus a vendor to contact when something breaks. And nothing runs on our infrastructure. You own the server, the certificate authority, the keys, the logs, and the access policies — both the control plane and the data plane stay inside your network. What it costs: two simultaneous connections before you're paying. You're still running a server, so patching and backups are yours. And because it accepts inbound connections, you need a routable public IP and a forwarded port — if your ISP uses carrier-grade NAT, or you're on Starlink, this will not work no matter what you do to your router. Choose it if: you want the outcome rather than the exercise, and you want everything on your own metal. ### Option three: The free tier of CloudConnexa [CloudConnexa is cloud-delivered](https://openvpn.net/cloud-vpn/), and worth being precise about what that means: we run both the control plane and the data plane. Not just the coordination — your traffic crosses our infrastructure too. A lightweight connector on your network makes an outbound connection to us, and clients reach your network through that. What you get: the same capabilities with nothing to host. No port forwarding, no dynamic DNS, no public IP required, and it works behind carrier-grade NAT. Patching, capacity, and availability are ours, not yours. And the free allowance is metered differently from Access Server's: five seats rather than two concurrent connections. A seat is a person, not a device, and each one covers several devices — three by default. For a household, that's a materially larger free tier. What it costs: five seats before you're paying — and us in the path. If the reason you're reading this is that you want nothing of yours touching someone else's servers, this isn't your answer, and option two is. We'd rather say that plainly than let you find out later. Choose it if: you're behind carrier-grade NAT, or you'd simply rather not run a server. ### Option four: A managed mesh service [Tailscale](https://openvpn.net/alternatives/openvpn-vs-tailscale/), [ZeroTier](https://openvpn.net/alternatives/openvpn-vs-zerotier/), [Cloudflare](https://openvpn.net/alternatives/openvpn-vs-cloudflare-zero-trust/)'s tunnels. A third party's coordination server brokers connections between your devices. What you get: the lowest operational overhead available. No port forwarding, no dynamic DNS, works behind carrier-grade NAT, running in minutes. What it costs: the vendor's coordination server holds your device list, connection times, and access policy, and new connections depend on their service being up. For many homelabs that's a fine trade — but it's a different answer to "self-hosted" than it first appears. We went through what a coordination server actually knows in more detail. Choose it if: convenience is the priority, or you're behind CGNAT and don't have a choice. ## Access Server or CloudConnexa? Both have a permanently free tier, but they're metered differently — Access Server gives you two simultaneous connections, CloudConnexa gives you five seats — and which you choose will depend on your architecture needs as much as your headcount. Access Server runs on your hardware. A Proxmox guest, a mini PC, a spare box, a cloud VM. You own the server, the certificate authority, the keys, the logs, and the policies, and no part of it runs on our infrastructure. This is maximum ownership. The precondition: it accepts inbound connections, so you need a routable public IP address and a forwarded port. If your ISP uses carrier-grade NAT, or you're on Starlink, this will not work no matter what you do to your router. CloudConnexa is cloud-delivered, and it's worth being precise about what that means: we run both the control plane and the data plane. Not just the coordination — your traffic goes through our infrastructure too. A lightweight connector on your network reaches out to us, so no inbound port is required, which is why it works behind CGNAT. That's the trade. You get something that works in situations where self-hosting simply can't, and in exchange we're in the path. If the reason you're reading this is that you want nothing of yours touching someone else's servers, Access Server is your answer and CloudConnexa isn't — and we'd rather say that plainly than let you find out later. So the honest decision tree is short. Public IP, and you want everything on your own metal? Access Server. Behind CGNAT, or you'd rather not run a server? CloudConnexa. And on headroom: if more than two people need access at once, CloudConnexa's five seats is the larger free tier regardless of the architecture question. We've written up the CGNAT and dynamic-IP situation in detail, because it's the thing that most often settles the first part. ## What the free tiers actually cover They're metered differently, and that matters more than the raw numbers. Access Server gives you two simultaneous connections — two tunnels up at the same time, however many devices you've enrolled. You can set up a laptop, a phone, a tablet and a work machine; you just can't have three of them connected at once. Concretely, two covers: - **Reaching your NAS from anywhere.** One connection from your laptop or phone. Files, admin interfaces, the lot. - **Administering your homelab remotely.** SSH, Proxmox, your dashboards, your Home Assistant instance — all over one tunnel, because the VPN gives you the network rather than one service at a time. - **You and one other person**, both connected at once, each with their own credentials, MFA, and access policy. - **A phone plus a laptop simultaneously.** Common and unremarkable. CloudConnexa gives you five seats. A seat is a person, not a device, and each seat covers several devices—three by default, and an administrator can change that. So five seats comfortably cover you, your partner, and a few friends, each with their own login and their own policy, each with more than one device enrolled. If your homelab is you plus maybe one other device, Access Server's two connections is the whole requirement, permanently. If it's a household or a group of friends, CloudConnexa's five seats is a much more generous free tier — and it's the one that works behind CGNAT. Past either limit, you're paying, and the community edition remains free and unlimited if you'd rather do the work. ## Where to start If you're going the community route, the OpenVPN community documentation and EasyRSA are the entry point, and the WireGuard comparison is worth reading first if you haven't settled on a protocol — WireGuard is the better choice for some of these jobs, and we say so. If you want a free tier, it's an account and, for Access Server, an install script. No card, nothing expires. Put Access Server on a VM and see whether two connections are enough — for a lot of homelabs it is. If you've got a household rather than a laptop, start with CloudConnexa's five seats instead. ### Access Server or CloudConnexa, which should you choose? Try the self-hosted Access Server solution or the managed CloudConnexa service for free, no credit card required. [See Which One is Right for You](https://openvpn.net/product-comparison/?_gl=1*1hi46u*_ga*NDgyODEwNDkyLjE3NzIxMjIzNDE.*_ga_E45Z33NTV7*czE3Nzc5ODY2ODIkbzExMiRnMSR0MTc3Nzk4ODMyMSRqNTUkbDAkaDE4NzIyNTczNDc.*_fplc*dVltNzJ6YmZ0bFZTdld4NjRtWVpVWXclMkJEV3AzZGhPUlRZaUppdWNxQkRjOER3MFN0VW84JTJCdEJGdnRDTmVYNlI5NlJBdTRLZ0VGOTNHMHc0U3l3bVFsR3NzQXk5RzJIQVdzNHE0QVJHcSUyQlVKUlRsNTM0S1RWZERyZ0V4NDNnJTNEJTNE*_gcl_au*MTM5NjEwNTIxNy4xNzcyMTIyMzQx*_ga_SPGM8Y8Y79*czE3Nzc5ODY2ODEkbzExMyRnMSR0MTc3Nzk4ODMyMyRqNTMkbDAkaDA.) ## Frequently asked questions ### Is it possible to self-host a VPN? Yes, and it's one of the more common homelab projects. You need a machine to run the server — a spare PC, a VM, a Raspberry Pi, a cloud instance — plus a way for clients to reach it, which usually means a routable public IP and a forwarded port. The software itself is free: community-edition OpenVPN and WireGuard are both open source, and OpenVPN Access Server's first two simultaneous connections are free indefinitely. ### How do you self-host a VPN? Broadly: install the server software, generate a certificate authority and server certificate, create credentials for each user, forward the necessary port on your router, set up dynamic DNS if your public IP changes, and import the resulting profile into a client app. With community-edition OpenVPN that's config files and command-line tooling. With Access Server it's a web interface and an install script. Either way, the router and DNS part is usually the fiddly bit rather than the VPN itself. ### Which VPN should you use for a homelab? It depends on what you're connecting. For linking a couple of machines you control, WireGuard is fast and simple and hard to beat. For giving people access — with individual accounts, MFA, revocable credentials, and per-user access rules — OpenVPN handles that natively where WireGuard structurally can't. If you're behind carrier-grade NAT, a cloud-delivered or mesh option is your only realistic route. ### Is there a VPN that's 100% free? For self-hosting, yes, genuinely: community-edition OpenVPN and WireGuard are both free and open source with no limits at all. OpenVPN Access Server is free forever for two simultaneous connections, and CloudConnexa for five seats, with all features included in both. What you should be cautious about is commercial free VPN services — the ones that route your browsing through their servers — where the business model is usually your data. ### Why is it bad to use a free VPN? This question is almost always about free commercial VPN services, and the concern is legitimate: running VPN infrastructure costs money, so if you're not paying, something else is generating the revenue — typically logging and selling browsing data, injecting ads, or throttling. That criticism doesn't apply to self-hosted VPNs, where you own the server and there's no third party in the path to monetise. A VPN you host yourself has no business model. ### How do I access my NAS remotely? A VPN is generally the right answer, and safer than the common alternative of forwarding your NAS's web interface straight to the internet. With a VPN you connect to your home network and reach the NAS by its local address, exactly as if you were at home — nothing about the NAS is exposed publicly. One connection covers this, so it fits comfortably inside a free tier. ### Do I need a static IP address to run a VPN server at home? No, but you need dynamic DNS if your address changes, which on most residential connections it does. A dynamic DNS service keeps a hostname pointed at your current IP so clients can find you after your ISP reassigns it. What you do need is a routable public IP of some kind — if your ISP uses carrier-grade NAT, port forwarding won't work at all, and you'll need a cloud-delivered option instead. [Heather Walters](https://blog.openvpn.net/author/heather-walters) Heather is a writer for OpenVPN. ## Related posts from OpenVPN ### Subscribe for Blog Updates ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Heather Walters", "url" : "https://blog.openvpn.net/author/heather-walters" }, "dateModified" : "2026-10-14T16:00:01.058Z", "datePublished" : "2026-10-14T16:00:01.000Z", "headline" : "The Best Free Self-Hosted VPN for a Homelab | OpenVPN Blog", "image" : [ "https://blog.openvpn.net/hubfs/Hobbyists-1200x630-1-Social-and-OG-Size.png" ], "mainEntityOfPage" : { "@id" : "https://blog.openvpn.net/best-free-self-hosted-vpn-homelab", "@type" : "WebPage" }, "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "url" : "https://blog.openvpn.net/hubfs/Dark=True%20Medium.png" }, "name" : "OpenVPN" } } ```