htop vs HWiNFO
htop
htop.devHWiNFO
hwinfo.comSide by side
| Figure | htop | HWiNFO |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 8 |
| Spec score · System Information Software | 7.6 (#16) | 8.6 (#5) |
| Supported systems | The site lists Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFly BSD, macOS, and Solaris as supported by current releases. | Offers versions for Windows 7 and later, Windows 95 and later, and MS-DOS compatible systems. |
Plans
HWiNFO
- Pro Subscription (starting price)Priced on request
- Pro Subscription (starting price)Price not published
- Pro Lifetime (starting price)Priced on request
- Pro Lifetime (starting price)Price not published
- Subscription Pro$29 a year
- Lifetime Pro$199, paid once
- Commercial evaluationFree
- Personal non-commercialFree
In their own words
htop
htop is a free, text-mode interactive process viewer for Linux and macOS. It runs in console or X terminals and requires ncurses, offering a command-line interface for watching and managing running processes. Current releases also list FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFly BSD, and Solaris as supported systems. The project, founded in 2004, is distributed as source code on GitHub and as pre-compiled packages from operating-system distributors, with installation examples for Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, and Arch Linux; Homebrew includes it for macOS. Its display can show Unicode Braille graphs and a Unicode tree view, including visual support for large processor counts. Users can set I/O scheduling priority and CPU affinity, choose dark or light terminal themes, and customize header meters. The memory percentage covers process-used memory; htop does not provide a per-process SWAP column.