htop vs iStat Menus
htop
htop.dev
iStat Menus
bjango.comSide by side
| Figure | htop | iStat Menus |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $9.99/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 3 |
| Spec score · System Information Software | 7.6 (#16) | 7.8 (#12) |
| Customization | The screenshots page says color themes are available for dark and light terminals and header meters are fully customizable. | Users can customize what appears in menu bar items and menus, including colors and item order. |
| Founded | 2004 | 2005 |
| Purpose | htop is a cross-platform interactive process viewer that runs in text mode in console or X terminals and requires ncurses. | iStat Menus monitors Mac system information from customizable menu bar items and detailed menus. |
Plans
iStat Menus
- Setapp subscription$9.99 a month
- Family LicensePrice not published
- Single LicensePrice not published
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.
iStat Menus
iStat Menus has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.