Terminal/Comparison

• Terminal Emulator Comparison

  • Covers: iTerm2, Alacritty, Ghostty, WezTerm, Kitty

  • Platform Support

    • macOS, Linux, and Windows
      • Alacritty, WezTerm
    • macOS and Linux only
      • Ghostty, Kitty
    • macOS only
      • iTerm2

  • GPU rendering

    • All of the terminals on this page target GPU-accelerated grid and glyph drawing rather than purely CPU framebuffer updates
    • OpenGL as the primary portable API
      • Alacritty, Kitty
      • WezTerm — default OpenGL front end (configurable in Lua)
      • Ghostty — on Linux, OpenGL 4.3+ renderer
    • Metal on macOS
      • Ghostty — native Metal pipeline (MSL shaders)
      • iTerm2 — GPU rendering mode uses Metal (CPU fallback remains available)
    • Optional WebGPU front end
      • WezTerm — WebGpu front end; runtime selects Metal, Vulkan, or Direct3D 12 depending on platform and drivers

  • Implementation Language

    • Rust
      • Alacritty, WezTerm
    • Zig
      • Ghostty
    • Python + C
      • Kitty
    • Objective-C / Swift (macOS native frameworks)
      • iTerm2

  • Image Protocol Support

    • Relevant for tools like yazi that display inline images in the terminal
    • Invented the iTerm2/Image/Protocol
      • iTerm2
    • Invented the Kitty/Graphics/Protocol
      • Kitty
    • Supports both iTerm2/Image/Protocol and Kitty/Graphics/Protocol
      • WezTerm
    • Supports Kitty/Graphics/Protocol
      • Alacritty, Ghostty

  • Nix Support

    • Idiomatic programs.* home-manager module
      • Alacritty via programs.alacritty
      • WezTerm via programs.wezterm
      • Kitty via programs.kitty
    • Available in nixpkgs; home-manager module available via the official flake
      • Ghostty — install via ghostty.packages.${system}.default, config via programs.ghostty in home-manager
    • Available in nixpkgs as a package; no programs.* home-manager module (macOS-only app)
      • iTerm2 — configured via nix-darwin or manually

  • Notable Creators

    • Person/Mitchell Hashimoto — Ghostty — also founded HashiCorp (Terraform, Vagrant, Vault)
    • Person/Kovid Goyal — Kitty — also created Calibre
    • Person/Wez Furlong — WezTerm
    • Person/George Nachman — iTerm2
    • Person/Joe Wilm — Alacritty (original author)

  • Notable Users

    • Person/Josean Martinez
      • WezTerm - see josean-dev/dev-environment-files
    • Username/typecraft aka Person/Chris Power
      • Ghostty - he says in Person/Chris Power/YouTube/25/11/yazi "I use Ghostty as my main terminal" - if this guy uses it as his main terminal emulator then it must not ready for some attention.

  • Notable Comments

    • Zig and Nix pilled
      • https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1ho57k2/comment/m46ytos/
        • Honestly yes. It’s subjective but I find a significant performance between it and Alacritty. I will caveat that I’m mostly comparing Ghostty and Alacritty both using fish and zellij on 2015 hardware.
        • The part I quite like is that it’s a project developed in Zig, with Nix/NixOS being their primary dev and CI environment so I’ll likely never have compatibility issues or weird quirks.
        • Is it the best thing since sliced bread? Absolutely not. Do I like it because of a very subjective difference it makes to me? Absolutely. Am I biased because I like Zig and Nix? Abso-f&$@ing-lutely

  • Approximate Age (as of 2026)

    • iTerm2 — ~15 years (2011)
    • Alacritty — ~10 years (2016)
    • Kitty — ~9 years (2017)
    • WezTerm — ~8 years (2018)
    • Ghostty — ~2 years (public release December 2024)