What is Nebula?
Nebula is an open-source overlay networking tool that creates an encrypted, peer-to-peer mesh network over any existing IP infrastructure, filtering traffic between nodes without requiring open inbound firewall ports. It was built internally at Slack, open-sourced in 2019, and is written in Go with clients for Linux, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android and FreeBSD. Slack engineers Ryan Huber and Nate Brown founded Defined Networking in 2020 to continue Nebula's development and offer a managed control plane on top of it.
Read the full overview
Sources checked 27 September 2026: official website, documentation, repository.
Key capabilities
- Open-source core: the Nebula binary and protocol, free to self-host under its open-source license.
- Managed control plane: Defined Networking's hosted option adds SSO, automated certificates and a web UI, free for up to 100 devices.
- Cross-platform clients: Linux, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android and FreeBSD support.
Running Nebula yourself means operating your own certificate authority and lighthouse nodes; budget for that operational work, or compare it against Defined Networking's managed tier if the team doesn't want to own it.
Shortlist Nebula for self-hosted, provider-agnostic mesh connectivity between servers, devices or clouds where you want to run your own certificate authority and control plane. Choose Defined Networking's managed option instead if you want SSO, a web UI and automated certificate management without operating that control plane yourself.
Nebula removes the need to expose inbound ports for internal connectivity, which is useful for small teams and homelabs alike, but self-hosting still means owning certificate rotation and node availability yourself.
Technical details
- Access
- Self-hosted
- Source model
- Open source
- Founded
- 2019
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, USA
- Pricing model
- Open source
- API
- Not specified
- Published release
- Nebula v1.11.2 ↗ (checked )
- Source check
- Primary source ↗ checked
- Website
- nebula.defined.net ↗
Official resources
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