Alacritty vs Xfce Terminal
Alacritty
alacritty.orgXfce Terminal
docs.xfce.orgSide by side
| Figure | Alacritty | Xfce Terminal |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Terminal Emulators | 8.5 (#7) | 7.3 (#38) |
| Spec score · Terminal apps | 8.3 (#11) | 7.8 (#31) |
| Configuration | Alacritty uses a TOML configuration file and does not create that file automatically. | Preferences let users adjust terminal behavior, appearance, colors, compatibility, advanced options, and shortcuts. |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Purpose | Alacritty is a modern, cross-platform OpenGL terminal emulator designed for high performance and extensive configuration. | Xfce Terminal is a lightweight terminal emulator for the Unix/Linux desktop, primarily for Xfce. |
| Scripting API | Yes | Yes |
| Search | Users can search forward or backward through the scrollback buffer, including while in vi mode. | The terminal buffer can be searched with case-sensitive matching, regular expressions, whole-word matching, and wrap-around. |
| Support | The project README points users to the `#alacritty` channel on Libera.Chat for questions or quick help. | The documentation links to a bug-reporting page for reporting issues. |
| Supported platforms | Linux,macOS,Windows,BSD | linux |
Plans
In their own words
Alacritty
Alacritty is a free, cross-platform terminal emulator for Linux, macOS, Windows, and BSD. It uses OpenGL and is designed for high performance and extensive configuration, for people who spend substantial time in a terminal. Vi mode supports viewport and scrollback navigation, text selection, and copying with keyboard bindings; users can also search forward or backward through scrollback. Configurable regex hints can recognize visible text or links and pass them to an external application or trigger a built-in action. One instance can run multiple terminal windows, including through the alacritty msg create-window command. Alacritty is designed to integrate with other applications rather than recreate their functions, and URL-opening applications can be configured. Settings use a TOML file that the software does not create automatically. The project describes Alacritty as beta, with missing features and bugs still to address. It has no tabs, split panes, or graphical configuration editor, and requires OpenGL ES 2.0. Windows use requires ConPTY support on Windows 10 version 1809 or higher.
Xfce Terminal
Xfce Terminal has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.