FreeRDP/FreeRDP

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

13593 stars · 15413 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

FreeRDP is a free, open-source implementation of Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), provided as a C library plus client applications. It enables connecting to and from Windows machines and other RDP servers across many platforms including X11, Wayland, SDL, and Android.

Use cases

• connect to a Windows machine remotely from Linux
• embed RDP client functionality into my own application
• open-source alternative to mstsc or Microsoft Remote Desktop
• script remote desktop sessions from the command line
• build an RDP client for Android
• access a remote desktop over Wayland or X11

When to choose

• you need a free, permissively licensed (Apache-2.0) RDP implementation
• you want to embed RDP protocol support in a C/C++ application
• you need RDP clients on Linux, macOS, BSD, or Android
• you require broad protocol coverage and active security maintenance

When to avoid

• you need a polished end-user GUI remote desktop app with a modern interface out of the box
• you only need VNC or SSH, not RDP
• you want a managed cloud remote-desktop service
• you prefer a higher-level language binding without touching C

Facets

library · maturity stable

http-client gui cli sdk security cross-platform developer-tools networking security windows cross-platform cpp c rdp remote-desktop rdp-client x11 wayland sdl microsoft-remote-desktop linux macos android

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