Formal vs zero trust network tools

Private agent connectivity and controls on the actions and data inside a connection.

Zero trust network

Criteria	Formal	Tailscale	Twingate
Agent identity and human attribution	Documented: Agents linked to their operator	Documented: SSO, tags and product-specific identity	Documented: SSO users and service accounts
Upstream credential handling	Documented: Configured secrets held at the proxy	Documented: PAM and gateway credential handling	Partial or edition-limited: Short-lived SSH certificates
Private access for agent workloads	Documented: Identity-based private access	Documented: WireGuard mesh and grants	Documented: Identity-based private connectivity
Native database access	Documented: Native database protocol proxy	Documented: Mesh connectivity and PAM sessions	Partial or edition-limited: Connectivity; database firewall planned
SQL action authorization	Documented: Per-statement policies	Partial or edition-limited: PAM controls and database permissions	Not documented: Database roles enforce SQL permissions
Database masking and result filtering	Documented: Mask fields and filter results	Not documented: Native result transformations not documented	Not documented: Native SQL transformations not documented
MCP server governance	Documented: Remote HTTPS MCP governance	Documented: Aperture connectors and MCP routing	Partial or edition-limited: Connectivity; native MCP support planned
LLM traffic inspection	Documented: Model request and response inspection	Documented: Aperture gateway visibility	Not documented: No native LLM payload inspection
Full comparison		Read Formal vs Tailscale ›	Read Formal vs Twingate ›