A Synergy alternative that switches your monitor too
Synergy lets your mouse glide between computers that each have their own screen. EasyKVM hands off your keyboard, mouse, and audio on a hotkey instead, and when the two computers share one monitor it switches the monitor's input on the same key. One-time $29.99, no subscription, LAN-only.
The key difference: the monitor input
Synergy is a "software KVM" in the mouse-sharing sense: each computer keeps driving its own display, and you move the cursor off the edge of one screen onto the next. It's great when you have a separate monitor per machine sitting side by side.
EasyKVM also solves the case Synergy doesn't: one monitor, two computers. Press your hotkey and EasyKVM flips the monitor's input over DDC/CI (the same channel the buttons on the front of your monitor use) while your keyboard and mouse hand off to the other machine. Each computer drives the screen natively, so you keep full resolution, refresh rate, and HDR — nothing is streamed or compressed.
EasyKVM vs Synergy at a glance
| EasyKVM | Synergy | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Two computers, with a screen each or a shared monitor | Two computers, two side-by-side monitors |
| How you switch computers | Hotkey | Moving the pointer across the screen edge |
| Switches monitor input (DDC/CI) | Yes | No |
| Share keyboard & mouse | Yes (hotkey handoff) | Yes (edge crossing) |
| Audio follows control | Yes, both directions | No |
| Shared clipboard | Yes | Yes |
| Mac & Windows | Yes | Yes |
| Price | $29.99 once | Paid tiers, per-version upgrades |
| Network | LAN-only, no telemetry | LAN |
What Synergy costs today
Synergy is paid software sold in tiers (Lite, Plus and Max at the time of writing), and major-version upgrades have historically been paid again. That's a fair model, but if you're pricing it against EasyKVM, the comparison is simple: $29.99 once, both platforms, every update included for the life of the product. And if Synergy's edge-crossing model is actually what you want, there are free options too.
Free options
Status checked September 2026:
- Deskflow is the free, open-source (GPL-2.0) project that Synergy is built on, for Windows, macOS, Linux and FreeBSD. It is actively maintained, with v1.26.0 released in February 2026 and commits still going in.
- Input Leap is a free fork of Barrier, which forked the old Synergy 1 code. It released v3.0.3 in June 2025, and its repository was archived (read-only) in July 2026, so it no longer gets fixes.
- The full field, free and paid, is in one comparison table.
Which should you pick?
- Two monitors, want the pointer to glide over on its own → Synergy (or Deskflow, the free, maintained project it is built on) fits that model.
- Two monitors, want to move control only when you choose → EasyKVM with the Monitor toggle off does the handoff on a hotkey and brings audio along.
- One monitor shared by two computers → EasyKVM, because it actually switches the monitor input. Synergy can't.
- Just keyboard, mouse & audio between a Mac and a PC → either works; EasyKVM adds audio + monitor switching for $29.99 once.
- See also: Barrier alternative · Logitech Flow alternative · Mouse Without Borders alternative · ShareMouse alternative · Deskflow alternative · Multiplicity alternative · BetterDisplay vs EasyKVM · All alternatives compared.