Best Self-hosted Network Security (VPN, Firewall, WAF) tools in 2026

ZTNET is a self-hosted web UI for administering private ZeroTier controllers, with multi-user access, organization support, and streamlined network and member management.

GPL-3.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

ZeroTier

NetGoat is a self-hostable reverse proxy and traffic management platform offering Cloudflare-like features such as TLS termination, rate limiting, WAF-style filtering, and dashboards.

AGPL-3.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Cloudflare+11

Self-hosted DNS sinkhole written in Go that blocks ads, trackers and malicious domains; provides a modern web dashboard, Docker support, DoT/DoH options and realtime stats.

MITActively maintained

Alternative to:

AdGuard+5

Lightweight PHP dashboard that converts Fail2Ban logs into searchable JSON reports and centralizes UFW-based blocklist control with HTTPS-based multi-server sync.

GPL-3.0Slowing down

Alternative to:

Fail2Ban

Open-source API and web interface to test TCP port availability for hostnames and IPs. Docker-ready, minimal dependencies, and exposes Prometheus metrics for monitoring.

GPL-3.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

MXToolbox Open Port Check+3

Node.js SOCKS5 proxy server with optional authentication, per-user statistics, Docker Compose deployment, CLI management scripts, and a Telegram admin bot.

Apache-2.0Slowing down

Alternative to:

Bright Data+8

The sftp-server subsystem in OpenSSH provides SFTP file-transfer services over SSH with support for internal-sftp, chroot jails, public-key and certificate authentication, and protocol extensions.

Activity unknown

Alternative to:

Files.com+12

Privoxy is a self-hosted, non-caching web proxy that filters ads and trackers, rewrites content, and modifies HTTP headers for privacy and access control.

Activity unknown

Alternative to:

AdGuard+6