Best Cli Tools in 2026

FFmpeg

FFmpeg suits people who need command-line media conversion, recording, or streaming across Windows, macOS, and Linux.

jq suits people who need to query or reshape JSON from a command line, including when working with large inputs.

Rclone suits users comfortable managing cloud files from a command line, scripts, or an API.

restic

It suits people needing free file backup and restoration on Linux, macOS, Windows, or BSD.

Nix

Nix suits technically comfortable users who need reproducible package builds, system configuration or shared development environments.

Pulumi

Pulumi suits engineers defining infrastructure in general-purpose languages across supported cloud providers.

It suits command-line users automating PDF compression, conversion, and batch directory processing.

Kubernetes

Kubernetes suits teams that need to deploy, scale, and manage containerized workloads across local, cloud, or datacenter environments.

Helm suits application operators, developers, distributors, and tool developers working with Kubernetes applications.

btop suits Linux and macOS users who want to inspect system and process activity in a terminal.

Supabase

Supabase suits developers and teams building backends around Postgres who need authentication, storage, realtime features, or server-side functions.

OpenTofu

OpenTofu suits infrastructure teams that define cloud or on-premises resources in configuration and want to manage changes through plans.

K9s suits Kubernetes cluster users who prefer terminal-based monitoring and management across Linux, macOS, or Windows.

Vercel

Vercel suits teams deploying web applications from connected Git repositories and using its listed frameworks and delivery infrastructure.