Any suggestions for a reliable browser-based remote access website or tool that performs well and can be self-hosted?

General Discussions
1

I’m looking for a remote access website solution that lets me access my home PC directly from a web browser, ideally without a third-party middleman.

Right now, I use Chrome Remote Desktop, but I’m experiencing performance issues like lag.

I tried RustDesk (hosted version) and found the quality unusable. I’m skeptical about the self-hosted version after that experience.

I’m considering Apache Guacamole, but since it’s just a web client for RDP/VNC, I’m unsure how well it performs in real-world use.

Any suggestions for a reliable browser-based remote access website or tool that performs well and can be self-hosted?

2

Hey! I actually went down the same path, tried Chrome Remote Desktop, then Rustdesk (hosted), and landed on Apache Guacamole.

You’re right, it’s just a web client for protocols like RDP/VNC, but once I optimized my VNC server (switched to TigerVNC and tweaked compression), Guacamole became a solid remote access website solution.

I self-host it behind NGINX with SSL, and latency is pretty acceptable over a decent connection. Totally worth exploring if you’re okay tuning the backend.

3

If you’re looking to self-host a remote access website without middlemen, I’d highly recommend checking out MeshCentral.

It’s open source, browser-based, and gives you full control over remote devices, even terminal and file access. I’ve been running it on a small VPS and accessing my home PC remotely with almost zero issues.

It doesn’t rely on RDP or VNC, so it feels lighter and faster in many cases. Bonus: it supports multi-user and group policies out of the box.

4

So this one took a bit of cobbling together for me as I used X2Go for the actual session handling and then expose it via Webshell (or GateOne) as a remote access website from the browser.

It’s not as slick as Guacamole out of the box, but for Linux-heavy setups, it’s fast and secure. I’ve used it primarily to access development environments remotely with full desktop sessions.

There’s some manual setup involved, but if you’re comfortable tinkering, it’s very customizable.