The Best AnyDesk Alternative for Mac

AnyDesk is one of the most popular remote desktop apps around. It’s quick to download, it runs on just about everything, and you can be connected to another computer within a minute of installing it. If you’re here, you’re probably using it to reach your own Mac and you’ve run into a session timeout, a license question, or just the feeling that there should be a more direct way in.

This page covers what AnyDesk’s free version and licenses allow, what AnyDesk needs on a Mac according to its own help center, and why a standard RDP connection is a better fit if all you want is to get into your own Mac.

What does AnyDesk’s free version allow?

AnyDesk can be used for free, and its help center explains who needs to pay: “Only outgoing clients that initiate connections to other AnyDesk clients for commercial use need to have an AnyDesk license.” The Mac you connect to doesn’t need one, since AnyDesk says “incoming AnyDesk clients that only accept and reject connections do not need a license.”¹

The free version has a catch, though: sessions time out. AnyDesk’s answer to “What if I need longer sessions time on the free version?” is that “you can restart your connection as many times as needed,” and that “if you want to avoid session timeouts altogether, consider upgrading to a paid license.”² Among the things AnyDesk lists for paid users is “uninterrupted connections without a time-limit.”¹

Licenses are annual subscriptions

AnyDesk says its licenses “run on an annual subscription” and are “tied to your AnyDesk account.”³ The smallest is Solo, which AnyDesk describes as “a single-user license for self-employed business professionals and IT specialists.” It includes one licensed user, one simultaneous outgoing connection, three licensed devices to start a connection from, and up to 100 managed devices for unattended access.¹ Larger teams move up to Standard, Advanced, or Ultimate. Prices are on AnyDesk’s pricing page.⁴

What does AnyDesk need on a Mac?

AnyDesk doesn’t use anything built into macOS. You “download AnyDesk on both local and remote devices,” and connect to the Mac with AnyDesk’s own app and protocol.⁵

On the Mac, AnyDesk supports “macOS 11 and newer”⁶ and asks for three permissions⁷:

• Screen Recording, which “allows remotes users to view the screen.”
• Accessibility, which “allows remote users to control mouse and keyboard.”
• Full Disk Access, which “allows remote user to access files and folders on macOS device for File Transfer.”

AnyDesk says that “without these permissions, AnyDesk will not be able to receive incoming sessions or provide full functionality.”⁷ Hearing the Mac’s audio has its own requirements: AnyDesk says audio transmission is supported on “macOS 13 Ventura or newer” with “AnyDesk version 7.2.0 or newer.”⁶

To reach the Mac when nobody is there to accept the connection, you turn on Unattended Access by setting a password on the Mac. AnyDesk warns that “anyone with your password and AnyDesk ID could gain full access to your device depending on the configured permissions.”⁸

It runs through AnyDesk’s network

You don’t connect to an AnyDesk computer by its address. Every AnyDesk app gets an AnyDesk ID, “a unique 9 or 10-digit number,” and “to connect to remote devices with AnyDesk, you need to know the ID or Alias of the remote device.”⁹ AnyDesk’s servers work out where that ID is. If they can’t be reached, AnyDesk shows a “Disconnected from the AnyDesk network” error, which it says “appears when the AnyDesk client cannot connect to AnyDesk servers.”¹⁰ On a network with a firewall, AnyDesk asks you to allow *.net.anydesk.com “to ensure that the AnyDesk client can reach our servers and initiate or maintain remote sessions.”¹¹

That network decides which apps can use it, too. AnyDesk says that “starting April 4, 2024,” Mac versions older than AnyDesk 5.0.1 “will no longer be able to connect to the AnyDesk network.”¹² AnyDesk puts it plainly: “The cloud version of AnyDesk requires internet access to find client information and initiate sessions from the global AnyDesk database.” The way around that is AnyDesk On-Premises, which runs AnyDesk’s server on your own network, and it comes only with AnyDesk’s largest license, Ultimate.¹³

That central service is also a target. In February 2024, AnyDesk confirmed that attackers had gained access to its production systems. BleepingComputer reported that AnyDesk “revoked security-related certificates,” that it was “revoking all passwords to their web portal,” and, from its own sources, that “source code and private code signing keys were stolen during the attack.” AnyDesk said there was no evidence that end-user devices were affected, and told users: “Please ensure that you are using the latest version, with the new code signing certificate.”¹⁴ It’s still a reminder that a cloud remote-access service sits in the middle of every connection you make.

Why use RDP instead?

AnyDesk was built for remote support and remote work across the internet: reaching a computer by ID, wherever it is, often one that belongs to someone else. That’s why it has its own network, IDs, and licenses tied to accounts. If you’re getting into your own Mac, most of that is overhead.

RDP is a standard protocol, not a product. It’s what Windows Remote Desktop uses, and clients for it already exist everywhere: Remote Desktop Connection is built into every copy of Windows, Microsoft’s Windows App runs on Windows and Mac, and FreeRDP runs on Linux. You don’t need a matching app from the same company on both ends.

It connects straight to the computer. An RDP client connects to the Mac’s address, on your own network or over your own VPN, and signs in with a username and password. There’s no ID lookup, no outside network that has to be up, and no session timeout.

It was built to carry a whole desktop. RDP was designed as a set of channels inside one encrypted connection: graphics, input, audio, clipboard, files, and more. Modern RDP streams the screen as H.264 video, which a Mac can encode in dedicated hardware, and the client picks the resolution. If you want the wire-level details, RDP vs. VNC walks through how RDP works.

The catch has always been that macOS doesn’t come with an RDP server, which is why remote access products bring their own software to the Mac. ProRDP fills that gap with RDP instead.

Meet ProRDP

ProRDP is a native RDP server for macOS. You install it on the Mac you want to reach, in place of AnyDesk, and from then on any standard RDP client can connect to it. To the client, your Mac looks like a Windows PC.

A few things that matter if you’re coming from AnyDesk:

• It’s free for home and personal use, with no session timeout. There’s no account, no sign-up, no device limit, and no features held back for a higher plan. See Licensing.
• Nothing goes through the cloud. Your client connects straight to your Mac by its address, and you sign in with ProRDP’s username and password. There’s no ID, no relay, and no outside network in the middle. To reach the Mac from outside your home network, connect over a VPN.
• Every connection is encrypted. ProRDP uses TLS on every connection, with Network Level Authentication on by default.
• You don’t need ProRDP on the other end. Connect from the RDP client that’s already on your Windows PC, or from Windows App or FreeRDP.
• It needs fewer permissions. ProRDP asks for Screen Recording and Accessibility. It doesn’t need Full Disk Access to copy files.
• It’s fast. ProRDP captures the screen with ScreenCaptureKit and encodes it on the Mac’s hardware video encoder, at up to 60 fps and up to 4K, with a bitrate you can set from 20 to 120 Mbit/s. An idle desktop sends almost nothing.
• It uses all your monitors. A client with several monitors gets up to four, each a full-screen display.

AnyDesk vs. ProRDP on a Mac

This comparison is for using AnyDesk to reach your own Mac. The AnyDesk column uses AnyDesk’s own help center wherever it says something, checked in October 2026.

Licenses and prices can change, so check AnyDesk’s pricing page⁴ for the current details.

When AnyDesk still makes sense

To be fair to AnyDesk, it does a lot that ProRDP doesn’t try to. If you support other people’s computers, need to reach a machine on a network you can’t set up a VPN for, want to connect from a phone or tablet, need to reach a Mac running something older than macOS Sequoia, or manage a mixed fleet of Windows, Mac, Linux, and mobile devices, AnyDesk handles all of that. ProRDP is for one thing: getting into your own Mac with a fast, encrypted, standard RDP connection.

How do you switch from AnyDesk to ProRDP?

Switching takes a few minutes, and you can leave AnyDesk installed until you’re happy:

1. Install ProRDP on your Mac and grant it the Screen Recording and Accessibility permissions it asks for.
2. Set a username and password in the Account pane. These are what your RDP client signs in with.
3. Click Start in the General pane. ProRDP shows you the address to connect to.
4. Connect from your RDP client. On Windows, open Remote Desktop Connection, type the Mac’s address, and sign in. On a Mac, use Windows App. On Linux, use FreeRDP.

Once it’s working, uninstall AnyDesk from the Mac: AnyDesk says to go to Menu › About AnyDesk, hold the Option key, and click Uninstall, then delete its settings folders.⁶ Revoke the permissions you gave it in System Settings › Privacy & Security. If you have a paid license, check its renewal date in your AnyDesk account and cancel it if you no longer need it.

For a full walkthrough from each kind of client, see How to RDP into a Mac and Getting started.