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Last validated: Aug 3, 2025
\nTailscale offers more than one way to serve and share resources. You can use Tailscale Funnel to share resources outside your Tailscale network (known as a tailnet) or use device sharing to share an entire device with someone. The following table lists the differences between these features and describes when each works best.
\n| | Funnel | Sharing a device |\r\n| --- | --- | --- |\r\n| Purpose | Expose local services to the public internet. | Share specific devices with a single person. |\r\n| Access | Anyone with the Funnel URL can access the shared service. | The specific person you shared the device with. |\r\n| Use case example | Sharing a local web server with a contract employee. | Giving someone temporary access to a device in your tailnet. |
\nAlthough both Funnel and device sharing serve similar purposes: to share with someone outside of your tailnet, their use cases and functionality differ.
\nFunnel is for more ephemeral purposes where you might quickly share a link with someone. It doesn't work with other Tailscale features like subnet routers, exit nodes, or access controls.
\nFunnel works best for sharing a single resource, such as a service or a folder, temporarily. You can share the resource using a unique Funnel URL. The person you share the URL with can only access the resource when their device is online, the service is running, and Funnel is running.
\nUse Funnel to:
\nConsider using device sharing instead if:
\nSharing a device is more temporary than inviting someone to your tailnet (which increases your user count), but less temporary than sharing a single resource with Funnel.
\nSharing a device works best for sharing an entire device with someone outside your tailnet. When you share a device, you send an invite link to the person you want to share with. Tailscale automatically quarantines devices you share. This means the shared device can only respond to inbound connections; it cannot use outbound connections. You can further refine their access with access control policies for shared devices. For example, you can apply an access control policy to the user's email address so that they can only access port 22 on devices tagged with tag:shared.
Use device sharing to share a single device with a specific person in a quarantined way that you can further manage using access control policies.
\nConsider using Funnel instead if you only need to share a single service for a short period of time.
\n\nThe following section describes example scenarios and whether Funnel or device sharing would work best.
\n| Scenario | Recommendation |\r\n| --- | --- |\r\n| You have a local development build of a web server running on your device and you want to share a preview of your changes with a co-worker. | Use Funnel |\r\n| You're hosting a Plex media server in your tailnet and you want to give a friend access to it so they can access your movie collection. | Use device sharing |\r\n| You're running a Minecraft server in your tailnet and you want to let one or more of your friends join. | Use device sharing |\r\n| You hired a contract developer and you want to give them access to a development server in your tailnet. | Use device sharing |\r\n| You're working on an integration project locally and you want to test a GitHub webhook receiver without deploying your project to the cloud. | Use Funnel |
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