The problem with the GitHub method is not the technology — it is that GitHub never offered it. Every route on this page is a service that actually intends to give you remote access, so using it does not put any account at risk. Pick by the job you really have, not by the word 'free'.
Split the need in two, because the honest answers differ. If you need to reach your own computer from somewhere else, completely free and fully allowed options exist, and they are good. If you need a cloud Windows machine you do not own, free tiers exist too — but their owners set conditions, usually a card at sign-up. What no legitimate route offers is a stranger's build machine repurposed as a desktop, which is exactly the GitHub shortcut.
👆 Four ways to get a remote Windows screen. Only one of them spends your account as part of the price.
Technical Anshu has a full video on reaching an office PC without a static IP, and Tailscale is the tool that makes it clean. Install it on the PC and on the device you carry; both join your private tailnet, and you connect by Remote Desktop or file sharing as if they were on the same network — no port forwarding, no public exposure, no static IP bill. The PC must stay switched on, and Tailscale's free personal tier covers this use because remote access to your own machines is what the product is for. For the commonest real need — 'my office PC, from home' — this is the correct answer, not a workaround.
Google's own free tool, made exactly for reaching your own computers. Set it up once on the host PC with a PIN, then connect from any browser or the phone app. It is the simplest option for helping family or reaching a home PC, and it is unambiguously allowed — remote access is the entire product. The host must be on and online, and it is a screen-sharing route rather than a separate Windows session, which suits personal use perfectly and multi-user office use less.
Two more tools built for remote access. RustDesk is free and open source, connects to machines you control, and can even be self-hosted for full independence. AnyDesk is free for personal use on your own devices. Both install in minutes and neither cares whether the machine is across the room or across the country. The same rule as everything on this page: the machine at the far end is yours, or one you have clear permission to access.
This is the closest legitimate relative of the GitHub method: an actual cloud virtual machine, registered to you, that stays yours and keeps its disk. The video passed it over for one specific reason — sign-up asks for a debit or credit card, and the fear was a surprise charge. That fear deserves respect rather than mockery. The honest middle position: the Always Free shapes are genuinely free, charges arise from stepping outside them, and the risk is managed by staying on Always Free resources and setting billing alerts on day one. A different real caveat is capacity: free instances can be reclaimed when a region is busy, so keep backups of anything on it.
The big clouds all offer genuine free trials — a real Windows VM, a fixed address, your software installed — usually against a card, with trial credit that expires in weeks or months. Used deliberately, a trial is the cleanest way to test whether a cloud desktop actually fits your work before paying anything. Set a budget alert before you install a single program, and when the trial ends, either the need justifies a small VPS bill or it does not — the decision guide in this series walks through that exact moment.
Watch the GitHub video for the technique — then choose the route on this page that matches how often you honestly need it.
▶️ Watch Full VideoOracle Cloud's Always Free tier: a persistent VM with your own disk and address. The differences are the card at sign-up and the possibility of free capacity being reclaimed — but your account is never at risk for using it as a desktop, because that use is permitted.
Tailscale on the office PC, as in the Technical Anshu no-static-IP video. It costs nothing on the personal tier, needs no static IP and no open ports, and the PC simply has to stay on. This covers the majority of real 'I need RDP' requests.
Not really, and the video found its limits directly: Kaggle notebooks are a data-science environment — the access was VNC rather than true RDP, in a 32-bit setup with about 4 GB of RAM. It belongs to the same family as GitHub Actions: a compute platform being borrowed for a job it was not offered for.