Wake-on-LAN services and tools, compared
Every way of waking a PC over the internet needs something inside your network to broadcast the magic packet — a cloud alone cannot deliver one. What actually separates RemoteRelay, the remote-desktop suites, the self-hosted dashboards, the paid phone apps, the free Alexa skills and Rooster Wake is what that something is: what has to stay powered on, what gets installed, what is exposed to the internet, and whether anything can tell you the machine actually came up.
Because this page names names, it owes them fairness: where a rival shape is the right answer, it says so. And one claim you can stop comparing on — "no port forwarding" is true of every serious product here, ours included. Treat it as the baseline and ask the questions above instead.
RemoteRelay — formerly the free WOLSkill Alexa skill
RemoteRelay is the biggest name in the software shape: an app installed on each computer, linked to an account, and controlled through Alexa like a smart home device — waking is the base capability, and actions beyond it are gated by plan. It began life as WOLSkill, a free Alexa skill — walkthroughs from 2022 show a setup with no payment step at all — and the old wolskill.com now redirects to RemoteRelay's subscription service.
Two questions to ask of this shape. The packet still has to come from something awake on your own network — an Echo, or another computer running the app; a machine that is off cannot be woken by software installed on itself. And WOLSkill's own history is a reminder that a hosted service's pricing and terms are the vendor's to change — a risk worth asking every service on this page about, ours included; our answer is at the bottom.
TeamViewer and Splashtop — the wake as a remote-desktop accessory
If you already pay for a remote-desktop suite, its wake feature may be all you need, and both of the big ones have one. The requirement to know about before relying on it: Splashtop's documentation says waking needs at least one additional computer on the target network, awake, with its software installed; TeamViewer offers the same another-device route, or a router port-forward from your public address to the network's broadcast address. So the wake rides either a second machine you leave on, or the open port this category otherwise exists to avoid.
That is not a criticism — remote desktop is what you are buying there, and the wake is an accessory. It becomes the wrong shape when the always-on second machine is the thing you were trying to eliminate.
UpSnap and the self-hosted dashboards
For a homelab, self-hosting is a genuinely good answer and UpSnap is a genuinely good tool: a clean dashboard, scheduled wakes, a one-container install. You supply the two things a hosted service supplies for you — an always-on box to run it on, and the remote path to reach it. UpSnap's own documentation says not to expose it to the open web and to use a VPN instead, which is the right advice and is also a project: WireGuard or a mesh network, name resolution, and keeping all of it patched.
What you give up relative to a service is the part around the wake: nothing reports an answer to your phone, there are no invitations with their own sign-ins, and the maintenance is yours. If that reads like a satisfying weekend rather than a chore, this is your shape.
The free Alexa wake skills
A class of genuinely free skills wakes a PC by voice, using the Echo you already own as the sender. For a wake now and then they are enough — we would rather say that plainly than pretend otherwise, and it is why Rooster Wake has a free plan with a free Alexa route of its own.
The limits are structural rather than stingy: Alexa knows it broadcast something onto your network, and nothing whatsoever after that. No skill of this shape can confirm the machine came up, keep a history with the reason a wake failed, or run a schedule that retries — those need something of yours on the network answering to a service.
wakepc.app — the wake as a phone app bought once
wakepc.app is the phone-app shape: an iPhone app, bought outright rather than subscribed to, that sends the wake packet and can shut a machine down again. Its site publishes a Windows-versus-Mac support matrix, which is the right thing for a wake tool to publish and the part to read before you buy — a Mac wakes by packet over Ethernet only, from sleep only and never from full power-off, so what any tool can do differs by platform whether or not it says so.
Bought once rather than rented, it asks a smaller commitment than any subscription on this page, ours included, and if a wake and a shutdown from an iPhone are the whole job that is the shape to weigh. The questions to put to it are the ones this page puts to everything else. Something inside your network has to send the packet, and a phone is inside your network only while you are at home — so ask what sends it when you are not. Then ask what answers back: whether anything confirms the machine came up, keeps the attempt on record with the reason it failed, or runs to a schedule while the phone is in a pocket.
Rooster Wake — and the same questions asked of us
Rooster Wake's emitter is a half-watt dongle plugged in near your router, or the same emitter as a free software agent installed on any machine you already leave on — a Raspberry Pi, a NAS, a home server. Nothing has to be installed on the PC you are waking, nothing listens inbound, and the free plan is a real product rather than a trial: one machine, unlimited wakes, no expiry, and its last ten attempts on record with the reason any failed. Where our agent differs from the app-on-every-computer shape above is that it is optional on the machine you are waking: waking never needs it, and what it adds there is sleep, restart and shutdown on the paid plans.
The paid plans are the part around the wake: a probe after every wake, so your history says "came up" or "did not, and here is the likely reason", with the answer pushed to your phone on the paid plans; server-side schedules that retry; people with their own sign-ins and, on Pro, roles; and a revocable wake link for someone with no account at all.
And the vendor-risk question this page asked of RemoteRelay deserves a symmetric answer rather than a promise: our firmware is open, the wire protocol is published, and the reference relay is AGPL and self-hostable. If we vanished — or you would simply rather run it yourself — the dongle points at your own relay from its setup page and keeps working.
Which should you pick
- You already pay for TeamViewer or Splashtop and leave a second machine on anyway — use their wake feature; another service buys you little.
- You run a homelab with a VPN already in place — UpSnap is excellent, and the maintenance is part of the hobby.
- You want a voice wake now and then and own an Echo — a free skill does it, ours included.
- You want a wake and a shutdown from an iPhone, bought once rather than subscribed to — a paid app of that shape covers both.
- You want to know the wake worked, wake on a schedule, or let other people wake machines — that is the part around the wake, and it is what Rooster Wake's paid plans are.
- You want no computer left running at all — the half-watt dongle is the only shape on this page that does the job with no PC, NAS or Pi kept awake.