An honest comparison across latency, the NX protocol vs WebRTC, the account model, platform reach, enterprise features, and pricing. NoMachine S.à r.l. has served Unix and Linux remote-desktop workloads for over two decades on the back of the NX protocol, originally open source through NX 3 in 2009 and now closed and commercialised; Remio takes a different approach with WebRTC, hardware codecs, AES-256-GCM end-to-end encryption, and zero playout buffering. Different lineages, different audiences, different price points. The table below covers performance, streaming quality, security, platforms, enterprise features, and pricing — and the paragraphs after it explain why each line of the table is where it is. Numbers are current as of May 2026.
| Capability | Remio | NoMachine |
|---|---|---|
| Performance | ||
| LAN end-to-end latency | < 5 ms | 30–100 ms |
| WAN typical latency (same region) | 30–80 ms | 100–300 ms |
| Maximum resolution | 4K (3840 × 2160) | 4K (paid tiers) |
| Frame rate ceiling | 60 fps (120 in beta) | 30–60 fps typical |
| 4:4:4 chroma (text-grade) | Yes (creator mode) | Lossless mode (high bandwidth) |
| Hardware H.264 / H.265 encode | VideoToolbox · NVENC · AMF · Quick Sync | H.264 when GPU supports it |
| Video codecs | H.265 · H.264 · AV1 | H.264 + NX (lossless / lossy) |
| Adaptive bitrate | RTT-based, automatic | NX bandwidth profile (manual) |
| Streaming quality | ||
| Zero playout buffer | Yes (ForcePlayoutDelay=0) | NX framerate buffering |
| Frame-loss strategy | Skip + request keyframe | Retransmit / wait |
| Multi-monitor host | Yes, free | Yes, paid tiers |
| HDR pass-through | Yes | No |
| Audio streaming | 48 kHz stereo, low-latency | Yes, configurable quality |
| Security & accounts | ||
| Account required | No | Only for Cloud Server |
| Pairing model | 6-digit PIN per device | Username/password + key-pair |
| Transport encryption | DTLS 1.2+ · SRTP | TLS with key-pair auth |
| Data-channel encryption | AES-256-GCM, end-to-end | TLS over NX |
| Key exchange | ECDHE over Curve25519 | RSA / ECDHE |
| Central directory of hosts | None | Optional via Cloud Server |
| Smart-card authentication | No | Yes (Enterprise tiers) |
| Platform support | ||
| macOS host | Native (ScreenCaptureKit) | Yes |
| Windows host | In progress (C++/WinRT) | Yes |
| Linux host | Planned | Yes (strongest platform) |
| iOS / iPadOS client | Native (SwiftUI) | Yes |
| Android client | Native (Jetpack Compose) | Yes |
| Windows / Mac client | Native | Yes |
| visionOS | Native | No |
| Raspberry Pi / thin client | No | Yes (ARM binaries) |
| Enterprise features | ||
| Multi-user / terminal sessions | No | Yes (Terminal Server tier) |
| Virtual desktops | Yes (Mac virtual display) | Yes (X11/Wayland) |
| USB redirection | No | Yes (Enterprise tiers) |
| File transfer | Yes | Yes |
| Clipboard sync | Yes | Yes |
| Apple Pencil & touch input | Yes, full pressure | Basic touch only |
| SSO / audit logs | Planned | Yes (Enterprise tiers) |
| Pricing (May 2026) | ||
| Personal use | $0 (every feature) | $0 (Free tier, 4 connections, basic features) |
| Workstation tier | — | ~$49.50 perpetual |
| Cloud Server (WAN bridging) | — (built-in P2P + TURN) | ~$90–180 / year / server |
| Enterprise / Terminal Server | — | From ~$180 / year / server |
Six categories, one paragraph each. The numbers in the table above are the headline; the paragraphs below are the why.
NoMachine's NX protocol was invented in 2003 to compress X11 over slow Unix workstation links and was last released as open source in 2009 (NX 3); current NoMachine ships a closed evolution that still carries the NX heritage of bandwidth-thrifty wide-area transport with lossless and lossy fallback modes. The design priority was always "make X11 usable over a 256 kbps line," and that origin story is visible in the 30–100 ms LAN latency the protocol still reports. NX is bandwidth-clever in ways WebRTC is not — it understands X11 primitives, deduplicates draw operations across frames, and shines on slow links — but the price is a software pipeline that buffers, retransmits, and waits for confirmations in ways a remote desktop targeting sub-frame interactivity cannot afford.
Remio runs on WebRTC M141 with hardware H.265, H.264, or AV1 over direct UDP, AES-256-GCM end-to-end encryption, and a zero-playout-buffer pipeline that targets sub-frame interactivity. The streaming philosophy is opposite to NX's: every frame is the latest screen state, lost packets are discarded rather than retransmitted, and the decoder is told to skip queued frames and render the newest one. WebRTC field trials enabled in the stack — ForcePlayoutDelay min/max 0, MinimumPlayoutDelay 0, Pacer-FastRetransmissions, Audio-Sync disabled — collectively strip every millisecond of buffering the stock build leaves in place. Different protocols, different decades, different priorities — and the numbers reflect it.
If you live on Linux, NoMachine is hard to beat. The NX protocol was born on Unix workstations, and NoMachine has spent two decades polishing the X11 and Wayland host experience — multi-user terminal sessions, virtual desktops you can disconnect from and reconnect to elsewhere, ARM binaries for Raspberry Pi thin clients, the entire shape of a Unix sysadmin's intuition. NoMachine's Terminal Server tier in particular maps cleanly onto the classic centralised-compute pattern: one beefy Linux host, dozens of cheap thin clients on the network, every user gets their own X session, sessions survive client disconnect. That is a deployment topology with a half-century of operational pedigree behind it, and NoMachine is one of the small handful of products that still ship a polished commercial implementation.
Remio currently focuses on macOS host with Windows host in active development and no Linux host shipping today. The macOS host uses ScreenCaptureKit for capture, the Windows host uses DXGI Desktop Duplication, and both rely on platform-native hardware encoders (VideoToolbox on Apple, NVENC/AMF/Quick Sync on Windows). A Linux host would require either re-implementing the capture path against X11 and Wayland or accepting the maintenance burden of two graphics protocols — work that is on the roadmap but is not a small lift. For a Linux-first organization or any deployment built around thin clients fanning out to a central terminal server, NoMachine is the natural choice and Remio is not yet a contender.
Both apps cover macOS, Windows, iOS, iPadOS, and Android. NoMachine adds Linux as a first-class host and client and ARM Raspberry Pi binaries for thin clients. Remio adds visionOS for Apple Vision Pro, ships iOS as a fully native SwiftUI app with Apple Pencil pressure and tilt forwarded to the host, and treats touch and trackpad gestures on iPad as central rather than retrofitted. The iPad client supports Magic Keyboard, Universal Control-style cursor handoff between iPad and host, and full pressure-sensitive Apple Pencil input — useful enough that designers and illustrators have made it the primary use case, sketching directly into a host running Procreate, Photoshop, or any pressure-aware desktop tool.
NoMachine's mobile clients exist and are competent, but they were designed as remote-access utilities for an enterprise audience rather than as primary input devices. Touch is basic, there is no Apple Pencil pressure support, and there is no visionOS spatial window for Mac mirroring. If your clients are a fleet of Raspberry Pis fanning into a Linux terminal server, NoMachine. If your clients are an iPhone, an iPad with Apple Pencil, a Vision Pro, and a Mac, Remio.
NoMachine's paid tiers ship the enterprise stack the open-source world has historically struggled with: USB redirection for printers, scanners, mass storage, and specialty hardware that lets a remote session use a locally-plugged device as if it were attached to the host; smart-card authentication for regulated industries that require physical-token login; multi-user terminal sessions where one host serves many simultaneous remote desktops; SSO and audit logs at the Enterprise tier. These are not minor checkbox features — each represents serious engineering against platform-specific kernel drivers, PKCS#11 stacks, session-management protocols, and audit pipelines that downstream compliance teams care about.
Remio is built around single-user interactive remote access with display streaming, keyboard, mouse, gamepad, clipboard, and file transfer. USB redirection, smart-card auth, and SSO are on the roadmap but not shipping. The product was designed for a different audience first: independent professionals, creative pros, gamers, developers who want to reach their own machine from another of their own devices. For a managed enterprise deployment in a regulated industry — healthcare, banking, government — NoMachine's licence fee maps directly onto features that show up in a compliance audit. For an independent professional or small team that doesn't have a compliance audit to pass, the missing pieces are unlikely to be missed.
To reach a NoMachine host across the public internet, you either forward port 4000/TCP on the host's router or pay for NoMachine Cloud Server to bridge the connection — both involve a setup step. Port forwarding requires router admin access, a fixed or dynamic-DNS-tracked public IP, and a willingness to expose port 4000 to the open internet. NoMachine Cloud Server avoids the port-forwarding step but adds a paid bridging server that lives in NoMachine's infrastructure and requires a NoMachine account to configure, with seat and bandwidth tiers driving the price.
Remio negotiates a direct peer-to-peer connection through STUN automatically. The signaling server at relay.remio.net coordinates the initial handshake, the two peers exchange ICE candidates, and a direct UDP path is established between client and host with no port forwarding required. When symmetric NATs on both sides make P2P impossible, traffic falls back to a Cloudflare TURN relay that is built into the product and requires no account or configuration. The relay stays end-to-end encrypted with AES-256-GCM: Cloudflare cannot inspect payload content. For a home or small-team user who just wants to reach their machine without learning what port forwarding is, Remio's WAN story is materially simpler.
NoMachine Free is personal-only, capped at four desktop connections, and excludes the advanced features that make the paid product compelling. NoMachine Workstation is a perpetual licence at roughly $49.50 per seat that unlocks the full single-user feature set. NoMachine Cloud Server, which provides the WAN-bridging relay so you do not need to forward port 4000/TCP yourself, lists around $90–180 per year per server depending on user count. NoMachine Enterprise Desktop runs around $180 per year per server, and the Terminal Server tiers scale higher for multi-user deployments where one host fans out to many simultaneous remote desktops.
Remio is free at every feature level on every platform — no per-device cap, no resolution gate, no commercial-use detection, no upgrade prompts. The pricing model is structurally different rather than aggressively discounted: Remio operates without a centralised account database to support, without paid relay servers as a feature gate, and without enterprise sales motion baked into the product. If your needs map to the enterprise tiers — USB redirection, smart cards, multi-user terminal sessions, SSO — NoMachine's pricing reflects real engineering for real workloads and earns the cheque. If your needs map to "I want to reach my Mac from my iPad without paying anything and without filling in a signup form," the gap is large and one-directional.
Same numbers, same structure, seven other tools. Pick the one closest to what you already use.
Download once, pair with a PIN, see the latency on your own LAN. No account, no port forwarding, no Cloud Server licence to renew. If NoMachine still serves your enterprise stack better, you are out exactly five minutes.
Available for macOS, iOS, Windows, Android, and visionOS.