Self host vpn over commercial bought one?
reddit / selfhosted

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LonlyGamerX1 · 2023-12-27 17:47

Currently thinking of setting up my own vpn on my server and wanted to
know, are there any big difference and if so what, between using your
own self hosted vpn and paying for a subscription to one such as
nordvpn or surfshark vpn apart from price and that fact you have more
control over your data on the self hosted one

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unoriginaltom · 2023-12-27 17:57

Depends on what you actually need it for. If it's for streaming, it's
generally easier to use someone like Surfshark so you don't have to
constantly deal with your IPs being blocked, and obviously the pro of
having more than one location.

The only time I use my self-hosted VPN is if I need a static IP for
something

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AnApexBread · 2023-12-27 17:58

What do you want your VPN to do?

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RiffSphere · 2023-12-27 18:06

It's different use cases?

A self hosted vpn is to get access to your home network and services.
It also encrypts the data, so it could be used if you dont trust your
mobile provider, or use a lot of public wifi.

While commercial VPNs also do this encryption (and they start to
advertise it as such more and more due to issues with their other
selling points), they are often used to hide who you are (torrent fort
example, but more and more are blocking it), to bypass geo
restrictions ("watch everything on netflix, even if it's not available
in your country", but streaming services are blocking them) and get
better deals (some big international sites charge more in wealthy
countries than poor countries, for example hotels, or airline tickets
are often cheaper if your location is the same as the "from" country
with an upcharge on the return ticket, or even services like youtube
premium can be 1/10 of the price in some regions). And with your own
vpn, all traffic goes through you home connection (or the server
connection if you rent one), so you can't hop around.

So yes, if you just want it for data encryption on public hotspots,
they are about equal, though I'm not sure I really trust a (random,
cheap) commerical one, certainly over a (correctly configured) self
hosted one. Other than that, they are basically 2 different products,
named the same based on their technology, and you have to check your
goals to pick.

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naxhh · 2023-12-27 19:21

So.. A vpn is just a private connection between two hosts.


Nordvpn and all of those give you a private connection to their hosts.
Those are normally running on different countries so you can "hide"
who you are or where you are from.

Your own roll vpn will have a private connection to your host.
So you will be able to access your services from anywhere without
needing to expose them to the public network.

If you surf the web from your vpn the pages you visit will think you
are where your server is, even if you are in another country

So use cases are highly different

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thehoffau · 2023-12-27 19:56

I selfhost headacale because I wanted/needed my own derp/cgnat gateway
and for my data not to go via the tailscale network. More complex and
challenging but it fills a need I have... If I could I would just use
tailscale.