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Polfence vs NetBird

Open-source WireGuard mesh · NetBird GmbH, Berlin, Germany

NetBird is an open-source WireGuard mesh from a German company, with a hosted cloud and a self-host option. It has group-based access policies, posture checks and IdP integration, and the source is on GitHub. For teams that want a mesh they can inspect and run themselves, it is a natural pick and a fellow European vendor.

Polfence and NetBird overlap on the mesh. Polfence goes wider: per-app ZTNA, just-in-time grants, an obfuscated tunnel, plain WireGuard configs for routers, DNS filtering, DNS hosting, dynamic DNS, remote desktop, monitoring and the compliance layer (DPA, NIS2 report, audit export). Polfence is not open source; you get a managed EU service with a flat plan price instead.

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Feature by feature

Reviewed September 2026. NetBird details are taken from public documentation; plans and features change, so confirm with the vendor before you decide.

Capability	Polfence	NetBird
EU data residency, EU-owned vendor	Yes Polish company, hosted in Paris and Amsterdam	Partial German company; check the hosted-cloud region, or self-host
GDPR DPA included	Yes Available in the dashboard	Check vendor Check vendor
NIS2 readiness report	Yes Article 21 assessment + printable report	No
ZTNA, per-app least privilege	Yes	Partial Group and port policies; no app-level proxy
Device posture checks	Yes Disk encryption, firewall, screen lock, OS version	Yes Posture checks
Just-in-time access	Yes Request, approve, time-boxed grant	Check vendor Check vendor
SSO + SCIM provisioning	Yes OIDC (Entra ID, Google, Okta) + SCIM 2.0	Partial OIDC login; IdP sync on paid tiers
DPI-resistant tunnel	Yes Perimeter engine, obfuscated WireGuard	No Plain WireGuard; TURN relays as fallback
Site-to-site router configs (plain WireGuard)	Yes UniFi, MikroTik, pfSense, OPNsense, OpenWrt	Partial Routing peers run the NetBird client
DNS filtering resolver	Yes Polfence Shield, DoH, EU upstream	No
Authoritative DNS + zone kill switch	Yes	No
Dynamic DNS (dyndns2)	Yes	No
Remote desktop	Yes Polfence Connect, consent-gated	No
Uptime monitors + public status pages	Yes HTTP/TCP/DNS, public /s/ pages, badge	No
Public API	Yes REST v1 + OpenAPI	Yes
Audit trail + signed webhooks	Yes HMAC-signed, Slack/Teams/JSON, CSV export	Partial Activity log; integrations on higher tiers
Pricing model	Flat plan per account: Free, Pro and Business monthly. Enterprise on request.	Free tier; per user per month; self-host under an open-source licence

available partly or with limits not offered unsure, check vendor— not applicable

Why teams switch to Polfence

Access per application with time-boxed grants, not just group-to-group network rules.
An obfuscated tunnel for networks that block WireGuard.
Router-native site-to-site without installing a client on every subnet.
DNS filtering, DNS hosting, dynamic DNS, remote desktop and monitoring in one console.
NIS2 readiness report and DPA in the dashboard.

Where NetBird is stronger

Open source: you can read the code, self-host the control plane and avoid vendor lock-in entirely.
Peer-to-peer mesh with NAT traversal; Polfence's Secure Connect is hub-and-spoke.
Clients for more platforms, including Linux, Docker and mobile.
Also a European vendor, so the jurisdiction argument is a draw.

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