Ghostty: Pricing, Features & Alternatives
Ghostty tries not to make you choose between speed, features and a native feel. It renders on the GPU (Metal on macOS), uses SwiftUI on macOS and GTK on Linux so it behaves like a real app on each, and supports multi-window, tabs and splits without a multiplexer. The emulation core is published as `libghostty` so other apps can embed it. It is MIT-licensed, free, and sits around 60k GitHub stars within two years of its public release. The trade-off against iTerm2 is fewer knobs, and that is a deliberate choice.
Category
Terminals & CLI Tools
Pricing
Free tier available
Free tier
Yes
Best for
Terminals & CLI Tools — terminal, gpu
Ghostty Pricing Plans (2026)
| Plan | Price |
|---|---|
| FreePopular | $0 (MIT) |
Pricing summary: Free. Always confirm current pricing on the official site.
Key Ghostty Features
- GPU-accelerated rendering
- Native UI on macOS (SwiftUI) and Linux (GTK)
- Tabs, splits and multi-window
- Embeddable libghostty core
Pros
- +Very fast, with low input latency
- +Feels native on each platform
- +Sensible defaults with little configuration needed
Cons
- −Fewer power-user features than iTerm2
- −No built-in AI
- −Younger project, so plugins and themes are still growing
Best Ghostty Alternatives
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Ghostty FAQ
What is Ghostty used for?⌄
Ghostty is a terminals & cli tools tool. A fast, GPU-accelerated terminal with a fully native UI, from HashiCorp co-founder Mitchell Hashimoto. It is free and MIT-licensed.
Is Ghostty free?⌄
Yes — Ghostty has a free tier you can start with, and paid plans for more usage and features.
How much does Ghostty cost?⌄
Ghostty is free to use.
What are the best Ghostty alternatives?⌄
Popular Ghostty alternatives include iTerm2, Windows Terminal, Warp. Compare pricing and features on our Ghostty alternatives page.
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