Zydra vs a VPS with tmux and Tailscale

1 November 2026

A VPS or a spare mini PC with tmux, Tailscale and an SSH app on your phone is the cheapest way to run coding agents away from your laptop, and on your own hardware you control everything. Zydra costs $40 a month and gives you less control, but it starts with one command and adds what a terminal-only box lacks: a graphical desktop with a browser beside the agent, Ctrl+V image paste, notifications on your computer and phone, a phone view of the whole desktop, and a timeline that rewinds the machine. If you only need agents in a terminal and enjoy setting things up, build the box yourself.

What does the do-it-yourself setup look like?

Most people end up with the same five pieces.

A machine. A rented VPS, or a mini PC or old laptop at home. For agents, memory matters most, since every agent runs its own builds and tests.
Tailscale, so you can reach the machine from anywhere without opening SSH to the internet. Its Personal plan was free for up to 6 users with unlimited devices when we checked in November 2026.
tmux or herdr, so agents keep running when you disconnect.
An SSH app on your phone, such as Termius, often with mosh for flaky mobile networks.
A notification hook, so the agent can tell you it is done.

The commands, on a fresh Linux machine:

curl -fsSL https://tailscale.com/install.sh | sh
sudo tailscale up
sudo tailscale set --ssh

Tailscale SSH lets Tailscale handle SSH logins inside your tailnet, and MagicDNS lets you type ssh mybox instead of an address. Then install your agent and a multiplexer. With tmux:

tmux new -s agent

Add set -g mouse on and set -g allow-passthrough on to ~/.tmux.conf so the mouse wheel scrolls and Claude Code's notifications reach your terminal. herdr is a free, open-source alternative made for agents: install it with curl -fsSL https://herdr.dev/install.sh | sh, detach with Ctrl+B then Q, and run herdr to reattach. It marks every pane as working, blocked or idle, so the stuck agent stands out.

For notifications on your phone, a Claude Code Notification hook that posts to ntfy is the common choice. The notifications article has the config.

Expect an evening to set it up, and a few minutes a month to keep it patched.

What does Zydra replace in that list?

All five, with different trade-offs. ssh zydra.sh opens a Linux desktop in your own virtual machine, drawn inside your terminal. The VM keeps running after you disconnect, so there is no multiplexer to manage. You reach it over plain SSH from anywhere, so no VPN is involved. The phone view replaces the SSH app, and notifications reach your terminal and phone without a hook service.

It also adds things a terminal-only box doesn't have: a GPU-accelerated browser on the same machine as the agent, which agents can open beside themselves and screenshot; Ctrl+V of a screenshot from your computer into Claude Code; and a timeline that records the desktop and rewinds the whole VM to an earlier point.

The trade-offs, one by one

Monthly cost. DIY wins. A small VPS costs less than $40 a month, and hardware you already own costs only electricity. Zydra is $40 a month, with a free 15-minute demo and a 3-day money-back guarantee.
Memory and size. DIY wins if you need more. You pick the machine. Zydra's plan is one VM with 8 GB of memory and 80 GB of storage.
Setup time. Zydra wins. One command against an evening of Tailscale, tmux, hooks and phone apps.
Upkeep. Zydra wins. We run and update the VM. On your own box, OS patches, disk space and backups are yours.
Control. DIY wins. Your own box runs any OS, any kernel and any service, with your own firewall rules and your data on hardware you own.
Hosting apps for other people. DIY wins. A VPS can serve a public website. Zydra gives apps in the VM no public address.
Seeing what the agent built. Zydra wins. The browser runs next to the agent, so localhost opens there with no tunnel. DIY needs ssh -L port forwarding or a dev server listening on your tailnet.
Graphical apps. Zydra wins. Browsers, editors and other GUI apps run on the desktop with the server's GPU and show in your terminal. A terminal-only box has none.
Image paste. Zydra wins. Ctrl+V in Claude Code fetches the image from your computer, through a terminal with Kitty's clipboard protocol. DIY means scp and pasting a path.
Notifications. Close. Kitty and Ghostty already show Claude Code's notifications over SSH, and ntfy covers the phone. Zydra passes any program's notifications to both without setup.
Phone. Depends on taste. Termius gives you a real terminal on a small screen. Zydra's phone view shows the desktop's windows, with a text field, a key row and taps.
Undo. Zydra wins. Its timeline rewinds the whole VM and branches from the past. On DIY you have git, plus disk snapshots if your host or filesystem offers them.
Isolation. Even, if you do it right. A dedicated VPS is already a separate machine. A home mini PC on your network needs care. Zydra runs each account in its own VM and blocks the VM from the host and private networks.
Terminal choice. DIY wins slightly. Any terminal works with tmux. Zydra works best in Kitty, then Ghostty; in other terminals graphical apps redraw slower or show as text.

Who should pick which?

Build it yourself if you have a spare machine or want the lowest bill, if you live in the terminal and never need a browser next to the agent, or if you want to host what the agent builds.

Pick Zydra if you want it working today, if your agents build web apps you need to look at, if you paste screenshots into Claude Code a lot, or if you want to check on agents from your phone with more than a terminal.

Try it

Run ssh zydra.sh in your terminal. The demo is free for 15 minutes and needs no sign-up.

Related: What is Zydra? and Zydra vs exe.dev. Or browse all articles.