Ghostty vs Warp

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.

Warp is a terminal application for macOS, Windows and Linux, with Warp Terminal and a separate Warp Agent CLI. It provides split panes, session sync, GPU acceleration, a scripting API and SSH support. Agents can be watched, steered or handed off from the web, mobile, terminal or IDE, and connect with Slack, Linear, GitHub, Jira and GitLab. Software factories are defined in factory.yaml with supporting agent files and can run from GitHub, Slack, webhooks or schedules. Factories can also run fully self-hosted inside a customer’s VPC. The Free plan costs nothing and includes core terminal features, with limited cloud agents, Warp Drive, collaboration and conversation storage. Build costs $20 a month billed annually with 1,500 credits; Max costs $200 a month billed annually with 18,000 credits. Business costs $50 a month billed annually for up to 25 seats.