Zayo vs Netmaker
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Zayo and Netmaker.
Quick Verdict
3.3/5
Zayo
0 reviews
3.6/5
Netmaker
0 reviews
Netmaker is rated higher (3.6 vs 3.3). More than 240,000 route miles and 34 million fiber miles worldwide across North America, Europe and global reach (2026 figures) Netmaker is an open source platform for creating and managing WireGuard virtual networks. Self-hosted on your infrastructure. More feature-rich than raw WireGuard with a dashboard and ACL management.
Zayo Fiber network and colocation carrier | Netmaker Self-hosted WireGuard network management | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.3 (0 reviews) | 3.6 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | paid | freemium |
| Starting price | Free tier available | Free tier available |
| Best for | Enterprises, carriers and content operators buying dedicated transport capacity — dark fiber, 100G/400G wavelengths, private networks and colocation cross-connects — across North America and Western Europe | DevOps teams that want self-hosted WireGuard mesh networking with a dashboard, ACLs, and site-to-site links under their own control |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ✓ | |
| DDoS protection | ✓ | |
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ✓ | |
| Free tier | ✓ | |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | eu datacenterus datacenterprivate networking | free tieropen sourceself hostableapi access |
| Visit Zayo → | Visit Netmaker → | |
Zayo
Pros
- + Tier-1 backbone: 240,000+ route miles, 11+ unique North American long-haul routes and genuine path diversity
- + Specific published SLAs (99.9% unprotected, 99.95% protected; 100% CloudLink guarantee) rather than marketing uptime claims
- + Real network-based DDoS mitigation (50 Tb+ capacity) with 24/7 NOC and SOC operations
- + Deep transport portfolio — dark fiber, 400G/800G wavelengths, Ethernet, IP transit, colocation — under one contract
Cons
- - No public pricing and no self-serve anything: quote-based, multi-year, engineer-installed
- - Procurement and install timelines are long; not viable for small or urgent deployments
- - APAC presence is subsea reach and partner interconnect, not owned metro fiber
- - Carrier-grade support experience is inconsistent in public enterprise forums; negotiate escalation terms
Netmaker
Pros
- + Free community tier is unlimited — self-hosted, Apache 2.0, unlimited networks and devices
- + Per-active-connection billing with hourly proration instead of idle seat licenses
- + Peer-to-peer WireGuard mesh keeps traffic off a central bottleneck; relay and egress gateways cover hard NAT cases
- + Deployment choice: fully self-hosted, Netmaker Cloud, or fully managed by their team
- + Dual-stack IPv4/IPv6 networks, private DNS, OAuth, ACLs; SCIM/SIEM/traffic logs on Business
Cons
- - Very small vendor (single-digit headcount, ~$2.8M raised) behind a critical-path product
- - Pricing page mixes current per-connection rates with legacy platform/network fees and a $99/month plan — billing basis is ambiguous
- - Community tier is community-supported only; SLAs are Enterprise-only
- - Self-hosting the server adds operational overhead (upgrades, database, TLS, monitoring)
- - Native mobile meshing not supported — phones connect via gateway and the standard WireGuard app
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