TideDesk European remote desktop software: TideDesk, made in the EU
TideDesk is a remote desktop made and sold in the European Union, from Romania. Here is exactly what is European about it, and what isn't.
What stays in Europe
- Your sessions never pass through a server. Screen, sound and input go directly between your two computers, encrypted end to end with QUIC and TLS 1.3. No TideDesk server sees them, in Europe or anywhere else.
- TideDesk's own servers run in Frankfurt, Germany, at DigitalOcean (a US-owned hosting provider): the connection service, which introduces a viewer to a computer by device ID and keeps that only in memory, and the report service, which receives a problem report only when you press Send. You can turn registration off, or name another connection service, in Settings.
- The seller is in Romania, under EU law; see the footer and the terms.
- No account, so there is no profile of you anywhere.
What isn't in Europe
- This website is hosted by Cloudflare, and downloads come from GitHub and the Microsoft Store: all US companies.
- Licences are sold through Paddle, a UK company, which handles payment as merchant of record.
- STUN servers that tell a computer its internet address are Google's and Cloudflare's by default, and can be changed in Settings. See the privacy policy for everything TideDesk sends.
Other European tools
TeamViewer and AnyDesk are German companies, so they are European too. The difference is elsewhere: they can route a session through their own servers when a direct connection isn't possible, while TideDesk never relays. That is why TideDesk sometimes needs a router port or a VPN where they don't. See TideDesk vs AnyDesk, TeamViewer, RustDesk and VNC.
TideDesk in short
- Free for personal use, including unpaid help to family and friends, with no time limit on sessions.
- It never watches how it is used. Its only rule is published: a computer managed by an organisation (joined to an Active Directory domain or to Microsoft Entra ID, or enrolled in device management such as Intune) shows a notice that work use needs a licence. TideDesk reads this from Windows on the computer itself and sends nothing anywhere.
- For work, one licence per person, used on any number of their own computers: see pricing.
- No account: connect by device ID or address, with an access code.
- Direct and encrypted: screen, sound and input go straight between the two computers, never through a server.
What TideDesk doesn't do (yet)
- It is an early alpha, for Windows. An Android viewer is an experimental preview.
- It never relays a session, so on some networks (for example mobile data on both sides) you need the router to open a port, port forwarding or a VPN: see remote desktop over mobile data.
- For a full comparison with other tools, see TideDesk vs AnyDesk, TeamViewer, RustDesk and VNC.