Ghostty vs mintty
Ghostty
ghostty.orgmintty
mintty.github.ioSide by side
| Figure | Ghostty | mintty |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Terminal Emulators | 8.3 (#11) | 8.2 (#17) |
| Spec score · Terminal apps | 8.2 (#13) | 7.9 (#27) |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Platforms | Ghostty runs on macOS and Linux; Windows support is planned for the future. | The site says mintty works on Windows versions from Windows XP onwards and can host WSL. |
| Scripting API | Yes | Yes |
| Split panes | Yes | No |
| SSH support | Yes | No |
| Support | Ghostty has no support team or dedicated support resources; help is community-provided through GitHub Discussions and Discord. | The project directs bug reports and enhancement suggestions to its GitHub issue tracker and general Cygwin questions to the Cygwin mailing list. |
| Supported platforms | macOS,Linux | Windows |
Plans
In their own words
Ghostty
Ghostty is a free, open-source terminal emulator for macOS and Linux. It renders with Metal on macOS and OpenGL on Linux for GPU acceleration, while native interface components provide multiple windows, tabs, and split panes. Its shared libghostty core handles terminal emulation, fonts, and rendering through a cross-platform C ABI. Ghostty includes hundreds of themes and can follow system light and dark modes automatically. It supports the Kitty graphics protocol for terminal images and provides automatic shell integration for bash, elvish, fish, nushell, and zsh. SSH integration can forward environment variables and install Ghostty terminfo entries on remote hosts. macOS Secure Keyboard Entry helps protect passwords from other processes, and official macOS binaries are signed and notarized. Ghostty is licensed under MIT and fiscally sponsored by Hack Club, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Community help is available through GitHub Discussions and Discord; there is no dedicated support team. The Ghostty plan is free, described as free and open source with no commercial backing.
mintty
mintty is a free Windows terminal emulator for Cygwin, MSYS, MSYS2, related projects, and WSL. It provides xterm-compatible emulation and DEC terminal screen controls, with 256 colours, True Colour, Unicode, bidirectional text, emoji, Arabic shaping, image display, Sixel, ReGIS, and Tektronix 4014 graphics emulation. Input features include configurable shortcuts, Unicode composition, AltGr, Windows IME, mouse modes, selection, copy and paste, drag and drop, and Ctrl-click opening of files or URLs. Window features include virtual tabs, session switching, fullscreen, transparency, multiple monitors, and high DPI. Options can be supplied on the command line or in a text configuration file, without registry entries. mintty is the default Cygwin Terminal, installed by default in MSYS2, included with Git for Windows as Git Bash, and able to host WSL. It omits PuTTY networking functionality; the project points to OpenSSH and inetutils packages instead. The listed latest release is 3.8.3.