Occasionally I see people mention gluetun.
- What’s gluetun? Seems like it’s a VPN client? What’s special about it?
- How do you use it in your setup?
- Do I need to know about this if I use Tailscale on the host for connecting to my VPN?
- Would gluetun allow me to use an additional VPN provider for certain apps without messing with the host Tailscale?


I use gluetun to connect specific docker containers to a VPN without interfering with other networking, since it’s all self contained. It also has lots of providers built in which is convenient so you can just set the provider, your password, and your preferred region instead of needing to manually enter connection details manage lists of servers (it automatically updates it’s own cached server list from your provider, through the VPN connection itself)
Another nice feature is that it supports scripts for port forwarding, which works out of the box for some providers. So it can automatically get the forwarded port and then execute a custom script to set that port in your torrent client, soulseek, or whatever.
I could just use a wireguard or openvpn container, but this also makes it easy to hop between vpn providers just by swapping the connection details regardless of whether the providers only support wg or openvpn. Just makes it a little more universal.