
Asleep by default, awake while you use it
Asleep by default. Awake while you use it. Reachable when you need it.
Sleep the machine from your phone when you walk away. While something is running on it — a remote session, a file transfer, a download, a Claude Code run — it holds itself up, and ten minutes after the last activity it goes back to sleep. Waking it again is the one step that needs something inside your network to send the packet.
The free plan sleeps and wakes one machine, from anywhere, and does not expire.
- Sleep it from anywhere
- Back to sleep ten minutes after you stop
- Works with the Echo you own
- Free agent, nothing to buy
- No software needed to wake
- No port forwarding
- Open source
- REST API and webhooks
By the numbers
Every figure here is a property of the device or the licence, measured or checked. The paid tiers have only just opened, so we are not going to print a user count.
Why something has to be inside your network
A magic packet cannot cross the internet
You are here because there is a machine you sometimes need from somewhere else — the files on it, the remote desktop, the render queue — and leaving it running all day to maybe use it twice is the wrong answer. Letting it sleep is the easy half. Getting it back is where every product in this category, ours included, meets the same piece of physics, and the next thirty seconds explain it.
Wake-on-LAN is a LAN broadcast
A magic packet is a UDP broadcast addressed to the whole local segment. Routers do not forward broadcasts, and no ISP will carry one to your house. There is no version of this that works purely from the cloud.
So something inside the network has to send it
Whatever you use — an app, a script, a voice assistant — the last hop has to originate on your LAN. That is a hard constraint of the protocol, not a limitation anyone has failed to engineer around.
Today, that something is usually a PC left switched on
Software-only services solve this by asking you to keep a machine awake to relay the packet. That works. It also means a computer idling at 40 to 90 watts so that a different computer can be asleep. If a machine of yours is already on all day for its own reasons — a Raspberry Pi, a NAS — that objection disappears, and our free agent will happily run there. An Echo you already own is on all day too, and it can send the packet for a voice wake. A dongle you build is for the network with neither.
Whatever sends the packet has to live inside your network. It does not have to be something you buy.
How it wakes
Four things can send it. Two of them you may already own.
Waking is the enabling step rather than the headline: the machine sleeps and holds itself awake on its own, and this is what gets it back when you ask. The sender is an Echo you already own, the free agent on a machine that already stays on, or a dongle you build — nothing to buy for the first two, and waking needs nothing installed on the PC itself. Nothing is port-forwarded, and no second computer is left running just to do this. Pick the one you have. An Echo sends voice wakes and wakes from the Alexa app; the agent and the dongle carry every way of asking — the dashboard, the phone app, Alexa and the Claude connector, plus schedules and the API on the paid plans and wake links on Pro. One piece of physics first: a Wi-Fi-only laptop cannot be woken by packet at all — its lid or its power button is the wake — and a Mac wakes by packet over Ethernet only and never from full power-off, so the plug row is how a desktop Mac starts from off.
Scroll the table sideways to see every column.
| Four things can send it. Two of them you may already own. | What it costs | What can trigger it | The one limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| An Amazon Echo you already ownOur free, certified Alexa skill has the Echo broadcast the packet on your home network. With the free agent on the PC, that is voice wake, sleep and status on day one. | Nothing | "Alexa, turn on the study PC", and a tap in the Alexa app from anywhere in the world. | Voice and the Alexa app only. The dashboard, the phone app, schedules, wake links, the API and the Claude connector all need one of the rows below. |
| The free agent on a machine that already stays onA NAS, a Raspberry Pi, a Home Assistant box, a mini PC — or a container on any of them. One install line. | Nothing | Everything: the dashboard, the phone app, Alexa and the Claude connector — plus schedules and the API on the paid plans, and wake links on Pro. | Needs a machine that stays on. An agent cannot wake the machine it runs on. |
| A certified smart plugFor a machine that starts when power is applied — most desktop PCs can be set to, and Apple-silicon desktop Macs do. It switches on a machine that is fully off and power-cycles one that is frozen. | About £10 | Power on and power cycle from the dashboard, through an agent or dongle that reaches the plug — on the paid plans. | The machine must start when power returns: a cold boot, not a resume. |
| A dongle you buildA Raspberry Pi Pico W and a few parts, for the network with no always-on machine and no Echo. The parts list names them. | About £17 in parts | Everything the agent carries. | A small build: flash it from your browser, print or buy a case. |
Setup
Three steps, about five minutes
The agent goes on the machine you want to sleep, and nothing is installed on a PC you only ever wake. The compatibility check further down tells you which of the machine’s own settings to flip — Windows, macOS or Linux — with the exact click-path. The second step is the only choice you make, and two of its three answers cost nothing. A dongle you build takes longer than five minutes; its page has the parts and the flashing.
Create a free account and name the machine
Sign in with your email — no password — and add the machine by name and network address. Install the free agent on it and its row gains Sleep, holds the machine up while somebody is using it, and lets it drop back to sleep ten minutes after the last activity. One machine is free for as long as you like, and nothing is installed on a machine you only wake.
Pick what sends the packet
Own an Echo? Enable the free Alexa skill and say "Alexa, discover devices". Have a machine that stays on — a NAS, a Pi, a Home Assistant box? Paste the agent's one install line on it. Neither? Build the dongle, join its setup hotspot and give it your Wi-Fi. The table above is the choice.
Sleep it, and wake it when you need it
Press Sleep on the machine’s row when you walk away, or let it drop off by itself once nothing is running. When you need it again: the dashboard, the phone app, or "Alexa, turn on the study PC" — from anywhere. Keep awake… on Plus and Pro holds it up for a window you choose while a long job runs, and the dashboard prices the hours your machines spent asleep at your own tariff, so you can see what the arrangement saved.
How we compare
How this compares to the alternatives
There are five realistic ways to wake a PC remotely. Four of them are genuinely fine for some people. Here is where each one actually lands. One note: we ship a free software agent of our own, for exactly the "software on a machine that stays on" case — so the last column is no longer only other people's products. Where a cell reads "not in the plans we reviewed", that is precisely what it means: we read the free and paid tiers of the wake-on-LAN services people actually use and did not find it. It is not a claim that nobody anywhere offers it. And a word before the table: on price alone the software-only services win — some are free — so the comparison worth making is substance. What we did not find in any of them: an answer to "did it actually come up?", schedules that retry and report, other people with their own sign-ins, or a wake URL you can hand to someone with no account. That is what the rows below are checking.
Scroll the table sideways to see every option.
Bring, build or subscribe
Three ways to use this, and one clear boundary
Everything the dongle does is open. What you pay for is hosted infrastructure — uptime, accounts, wake confirmation, power actions, webhooks, support. There is no crippled community firmware and no private premium firmware. The optional agent is the one closed binary we ship, and it is free either way: it is what sleeps a machine, holds it up while it is in use and puts it back — and installed on a machine that already stays on it is also an emitter, with no hardware to buy at all.
Bring it
Nothing to buy
An Echo you already own sends voice wakes through our free Alexa skill. The free agent on the machine itself is what sleeps it and holds it awake, and on a machine that already stays on — a NAS, a Raspberry Pi, a Home Assistant box — it sends the wake to everything else. Either one is the entire hardware list, and the free plan does not expire.
Get the agentBuild it
About £17 of parts, and the firmware is free
For the network with no Echo and nothing that stays on: a Raspberry Pi Pico W in a case — three off-the-shelf parts, and the parts page lists exactly which ones with live links for the UK, the US and the EU. The firmware, the case and the bill of materials are in the repository; flashing is done from your browser over USB, nothing is soldered, and there is no part of this you buy from us.
See the parts listSubscribe
Free plan, or a paid one
The free plan sleeps and wakes one machine from anywhere, for as long as you like, includes ten sleeps a calendar month, and keeps its last ten attempts on record. Paying is about holding a machine up and about people: Plus is a household — five machines, unmetered sleeps with Keep awake…, Restart… and Shut down…, five people who can wake them, confirmation the machine actually came up, and schedules that live here, retry and report. Pro is a business — twenty machines grouped into sites, twenty-five people with roles, batch actions across a site, and wake links for someone with no account at all.
Compare the plans
The boundary is a service, not a feature list. If we ever move a device capability behind a subscription, we will have broken the promise this paragraph is making.
Before you buy
Will it work on my PC?
Usually — and the answer depends far more on your PC than on us. At most seven questions, no email address, and you get the exact click-path for your operating system at the end.
What paying adds
The free plan wakes your PC. The paid plans run everything around it — power, people, schedules and proof.
The free plan is a real product rather than a trial — one machine, unlimited wakes, ten sleeps a calendar month, the dashboard, and its last ten attempts on record. No dongle? The free agent goes on the machine you want to sleep, and on any always-on box — a Raspberry Pi, a NAS, a machine that never sleeps — it is also the emitter, so nothing on this page requires buying hardware. The paid plans are the part our servers do: sign in, pick one, and it is live in a minute. EU readers: the free plan is yours today, and the form below is where to hear first when the paid plans open.
Ecosystem
Ways to reach a machine
The free agent on the machine is what sleeps it, holds it awake while it is in use and puts it back. An emitter — the same agent on a box you already leave on, or a dongle you build — does the other job: it puts the magic packet on your network. Everything below is a different way of telling them to do those things.
Remote AI
One button runs Claude Code on it — even when it is asleep
Press Remote AI on a machine's row: a sleeping PC is woken, held awake for the window you choose, and Claude Code starts headlessly in a folder you registered — Open in Claude then hands you the live session on the device in your hand, and ending it lets the machine sleep again. It works with your own Claude Code install and sign-in, on your own Claude plan. The free plan includes ten sessions a month; Plus runs them unmetered. Rooster Wake is also in the Claude connectors directory — one click adds it to your Claude account, and then any Claude chat can wake and reach your machines by name.
Pricing
Free gives you the wake. Paid puts it to work.
Every tier speaks the same protocol to the same firmware. Paying changes what our servers will do for you, never what your device is allowed to do — and "device" includes the free agent: install it on any always-on box and no plan here needs a hardware purchase.
Need more? Pro takes add-on slots for both: £3 a year (inc. VAT) per extra machine and £5 a year (inc. VAT) per extra emitter, from your dashboard. Plus takes emitter slots only — growing past five machines is what Pro is for.
In the rest of the world the plans are $12 and $24 a year, add-on slots $3 and $5. Cancel whenever you like; the device keeps working on the free tier, and if you would rather not deal with us at all, point it at your own relay and it keeps every paid capability that does not require a server we run.
Self-hosting is free and always will be. It is not a downgrade path — it is the same firmware talking the same protocol to a relay you control.
Open source
The device is yours, including the parts that make it work
There is no community edition. The firmware in the repository is the firmware our hosted relay speaks to, and the protocol between them is a published contract rather than an implementation detail.
Firmware, case and tools are MIT. The reference relay is AGPL-3.0. The name and logo are not open — you can fork all of it, you just cannot call your fork ours.
firmware/
Pico W and Pico 2 W firmware in C on the pico-sdk. Builds with CMake.
MITrelay-reference/
The self-hostable relay. Node and
AGPL-3.0ws, no database.case/
Snap case as STL, with print notes.
MITtools/mkconfig/
Generate a config UF2 for headless provisioning.
MIT
Self-host the relay in about five minutes
The reference relay is single-tenant, has no database, and implements the whole protocol including the challenge-response handshake. It is a real implementation, not a demo.
Then point the dongle at your own wss:// endpoint from the setup page, and we are out of the loop entirely.
Questions
The things that actually go wrong
Ordered by how often we expect them to come up rather than by how flattering they are.
Do I need the dongle at all?
What is actually in the free plan?
What does wake confirmation actually do?
Can it connect me after it wakes?
ssh:// host or vnc://studio, AnyDesk, Parsec, RustDesk, Moonlight, or a plain URL like a LAN dashboard — and the moment wake confirmation reports the machine up, the dashboard offers a Connect button that opens it. A wake link carries it too: whoever you gave the URL taps Wake, and the same page offers the connection once the machine is up. One grammar worth knowing: Microsoft's Remote Desktop apps refuse a bare rdp://name — they want their attribute form with the inner colons encoded, rdp://full%20address=s%3A192.168.1.20%3A3389 (the raw-colon form in Microsoft's own docs fails Safari's URL parsing, and home networks usually need the IP rather than the machine's name). And two limits. The connection itself is not ours — the button launches whatever client the link names, so that client still has to be installed and able to reach the machine. And storing the link is free on every plan, but the button appears when something can say the machine is up, and that confirmation is a paid feature.What happens if Amazon changes something?
Can I wake it with Siri?
What does "special launch price" mean?
Do I need to forward a port?
Does it matter if my home IP address changes?
My router has client isolation or a guest network. Will this work?
How do I find the right MAC address?
getmac /v and take the Physical Address of the Ethernet row — not a VirtualBox, VMware, Hyper-V, WSL or VPN adapter. On macOS, System Settings, Network, Ethernet, Details, Hardware, or ifconfig en0 | grep ether. On Linux, ip link show and read link/ether off the physical interface. Give the dongle the address of the card the machine will be listening on while asleep — if it is wired, that is the Ethernet one, even if Wi-Fi is also enabled.It is not waking, and I have checked everything. What is it?
What is Windows fast startup, and why does it break this?
What do I set in the BIOS?
Why does waking from a full shutdown behave differently from waking from sleep?
My PC is on Wi-Fi, not Ethernet. Will it work?
Can it turn my PC off as well?
Can the agent wake the machine it is installed on?
Can other people wake my machines?
Can someone wake a machine without having an account?
Does the dongle need to be near my PC?
What happens to my Wi-Fi password?
How bad is it if someone steals my device token?
What if you disappear?
git clone, then docker compose up -d. That is not a courtesy — the protocol is a published contract precisely so that this is a real option rather than a reassuring sentence.Why not just use a smart plug?
Why not run this on a Raspberry Pi I already own?
Free services and Alexa skills wake a PC too. Why pay for this?
Do I have to pay for anything?
How do I get support?
Check it will work before you spend anything
The compatibility check takes about a minute, asks for no email address, and will tell you plainly if the answer is no — before you have bought a board or spent an evening on it.