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Side-by-side comparison

Pick up to four tools and compare adoption, momentum and maintenance at a glance. The crown marks the leader in each row.

Alacritty

Minimal, cross-platform OpenGL terminal focused on raw speed; pairs with tmux or Zellij for panes.

Windows Terminal

Microsoft's modern tabbed terminal for PowerShell, cmd and WSL with GPU text rendering.

iTerm2

Feature-rich macOS terminal with split panes, tmux integration and shell integration.

Ghostty

Fast, native, GPU-accelerated terminal by Mitchell Hashimoto that balances speed, features and native UI.

Head to head

Metric	Alacritty	Windows Terminal	iTerm2	Ghostty
Stars	66.1k	105k	18.3k	63.9k
Weekly downloads	397	n/a	n/a	n/a
Download growth	-6%	n/a	n/a	n/a
Popularity score	57/100	92/100	78/100	88/100
Forks	3.7k	9.7k	1.6k	3.9k
Open issues	346	1.8k	68	268
Last commit	5d ago	5d ago	1d ago	2d ago
Latest version	0.17.0Apr 6, 2026	n/a	n/a	n/a
License	Apache-2.0	MIT	GPL-2.0	MIT
First released	2016	2017	2011	2022
Signals	None	Popular	Popular	Trending
Listed in	Git & Developer Tools › Terminal Emulators	Git & Developer Tools › Terminal Emulators	Git & Developer Tools › Terminal Emulators	Git & Developer Tools › Terminal Emulators

Weekly downloads over time

Hover for exact values; switch to log scale for tools of very different sizes. Not shown (no comparable download data): Windows Terminal, iTerm2, Ghostty.

Alacritty

Minimal, cross-platform OpenGL terminal focused on raw speed; pairs with tmux or Zellij for panes.

Windows Terminal

Microsoft's modern tabbed terminal for PowerShell, cmd and WSL with GPU text rendering.

iTerm2

Feature-rich macOS terminal with split panes, tmux integration and shell integration.

Ghostty

Fast, native, GPU-accelerated terminal by Mitchell Hashimoto that balances speed, features and native UI.

Head to head

Metric	Alacritty	Windows Terminal	iTerm2	Ghostty
Stars	66.1k	105k	18.3k	63.9k
Weekly downloads	397	n/a	n/a	n/a
Download growth	-6%	n/a	n/a	n/a
Popularity score	57/100	92/100	78/100	88/100
Forks	3.7k	9.7k	1.6k	3.9k
Open issues	346	1.8k	68	268
Last commit	5d ago	5d ago	1d ago	2d ago
Latest version	0.17.0Apr 6, 2026	n/a	n/a	n/a
License	Apache-2.0	MIT	GPL-2.0	MIT
First released	2016	2017	2011	2022
Signals	None	Popular	Popular	Trending
Listed in	Git & Developer Tools › Terminal Emulators	Git & Developer Tools › Terminal Emulators	Git & Developer Tools › Terminal Emulators	Git & Developer Tools › Terminal Emulators

Weekly downloads over time

Hover for exact values; switch to log scale for tools of very different sizes. Not shown (no comparable download data): Windows Terminal, iTerm2, Ghostty.

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Weekly downloads over time

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Weekly downloads over time