Compare · AnyDesk
An AnyDesk alternative with nothing locked behind a tier.
AnyDesk is fast, light and pleasant to use, and it undercut TeamViewer for years by being exactly that. The reason people leave it is rarely the software. It is the gradual discovery that the features a support business needs are on the plan above the one they bought.
The pattern
The plan above the one you bought.
Commercial remote-support tools are nearly all sold the same way: a low entry price that does most of the job, with the parts a real support business leans on placed one rung up.
How many machines you may save
Entry plans cap the address book. It is a soft cap you do not notice until the day you hit it, usually while you are busy. Here the list is on your own server, so there is no number to run out of.
How many of you may be signed in
Concurrent-session limits are the usual way these products are metered. Two engineers working at once on a one-seat plan is the moment the upgrade prompt appears. You buy a login per technician here, and each one works whenever they like.
The grown-up features
Session recording, an activity log, permission controls, putting your own name on the client. These tend to arrive with the business or enterprise plan. All of them are switched on here at the only price there is.
Side by side
What is genuinely different.
Both products do the core job well. This is only the ground where they part company.
| MyRemoteDesk | AnyDesk | |
|---|---|---|
| How features are sold | One price, everything on | Split across plans |
| Saved computers | Unlimited — it is your server | Capped by plan |
| Session recording | Included | Higher plans |
| Your own branding on the client | Included, at any size | Higher plans |
| Where the address book lives | Your server | The vendor's cloud |
| Where a relayed session goes | Your relay | The vendor's network |
| Source code | Open, AGPL-3.0 | Closed |
| Cost as you take on more clients | Does not move — you pay per person, not per machine | Plan limits apply |
Plans and their limits change, and ours is a snapshot written by a competitor. Open your AnyDesk account, look at what your plan actually includes and what the next one up costs you, and compare that with £4.95 per technician a month. If you are comfortably inside your plan, there is no argument here worth having.
The honest bit
Where AnyDesk is still the better buy.
- It is lighter and it starts faster. Years of work went into that and it shows. If your whole job is jumping onto a machine for ninety seconds, that polish is worth something.
- Their mobile apps are more finished. Controlling a computer from a phone works on both. Theirs is nicer.
- It is somebody else's problem. No server of yours to update, back up or renew a certificate on. That is a genuine feature and it is why our hosted plan exists.
- You are inside your plan and happy. If nothing about your bill or your limits annoys you, switching costs you a fortnight and gains you nothing.
Questions
Straight answers.
Is AnyDesk not already cheap enough?
For one or two people, quite possibly, and if the entry plan does everything you need then stay put. The gap opens when you grow, because the features a support business needs most - more saved machines, session recording, more people signed in at once - tend to sit on the plans above the entry one.
What is the actual difference in how it connects?
Very little. Both try to make a direct connection between the two computers and fall back to relaying the traffic when the network will not allow it. The difference is whose relay it falls back to. Ours is your server, or the one you rent from us.
Can I record sessions?
Yes, and it is included rather than being a reason to move up a plan. Recording is worth having if you ever need to show a client exactly what was done on their machine.
How many machines can I keep in the address book?
As many as you like. The list lives on your own server, so the only limit is disk space, and an address book entry is a few hundred bytes.
Does it run on the same range of devices?
Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iPhone, plus Raspberry Pi. If you support people on their phones, that works the same way it does now.
Keep reading
Related
Try it before you decide anything.
The client is free and the source is public. Download it, connect two of your own machines, and see whether it does what you need. Nothing to sign up for.