NordVPN has announced it will not be discontinuing Meshnet, its peer-to-peer encrypted tunneling feature, reversing a previous decision to sunset the service by December 1, 2025.
The change in course comes after vocal community backlash, with many users citing Meshnet as an integral part of their daily workflows.
The company acknowledged that while maintaining Meshnet remains financially challenging, user feedback revealed that the tool offers significant practical value, especially for gaming, secure file sharing, and private networking across devices.
Originally launched in 2022 and made free for all users in March 2023, Meshnet allows users to link devices over encrypted tunnels using NordVPN’s infrastructure. It enables traffic routing, file sharing, and remote access between trusted devices, functionality that makes it popular among both casual users and tech-savvy audiences who value low-setup networking alternatives.
When NordVPN announced plans to shut the service down in August 2025, citing limited adoption and high maintenance costs, the response was swift and overwhelmingly negative. On platforms like Reddit, users expressed frustration, with many stating they used Meshnet more often than NordVPN's core VPN service. Some threatened to cancel subscriptions or migrate to alternatives like Tailscale, while others voiced disappointment over a perceived lack of user input in the decision-making process.
In light of the community response, NordVPN now plans not only to keep Meshnet live and supported but also to open-source the project. The company says this move is aimed at empowering the user base to contribute, inspect, or build on top of the platform, potentially addressing long-term maintenance concerns by shifting part of the development burden to the open-source community.
NordVPN is a leading consumer VPN service provider with millions of users globally. Known for its strong privacy posture and extensive server infrastructure, the firm has increasingly positioned itself as more than just a VPN provider, offering secure storage via NordLocker and password management through NordPass.
The open-sourcing of Meshnet follows previous transparency efforts by the company, including the public release of its “Libtelio” and “Libdrop” libraries, which power NordVPN’s core networking stack and Meshnet’s file-sharing capabilities, respectively.
While NordVPN has not offered a concrete roadmap for Meshnet’s future development, the decision to preserve the feature and engage the community marks a significant shift from just six weeks ago. Development will now focus on reducing technical friction and making Meshnet more accessible.
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