mise vs vfox
mise
mise.en.devvfox
vfox.devSide by side
| Figure | mise | vfox |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Development Environment Management Tools | 7.5 (#21) | 8.0 (#11) |
| Configuration | A project's mise.toml can declare tools, environment variables, and tasks, while global configuration supplies personal defaults. | It saves tool version information in a .vfox.toml file that can be shared across projects and teams. |
| Integrations | The documentation covers IDE integration and provides a GitHub Actions integration through mise-action. | The documentation lists community plugins for tools including Bun, Clang, CMake, Crystal, Dart, Deno, and .NET. |
| Purpose | mise is a development environment setup tool that uses mise.toml to configure project tools, environments, and commands. | vfox is a cross-platform version manager for installing and switching between development runtimes and SDKs. |
| Security | The documentation describes safe mode as a way to prevent project configuration from executing code or injecting environment variables in supported operations. | The multi-user guide recommends group permissions for a shared SDK directory and warns that broad 777 permissions expose it to unauthorized users. |
| Shell support | Shell activation is documented for bash, zsh, fish, nushell, PowerShell, and other shells. | Supported shells include PowerShell, Git Bash, Bash, ZSH, Fish, CMD, Clink, Cmder, and Nushell; CMD supports only global scope and is not recommended. |
Plans
In their own words
mise
mise is a development environment setup tool for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Projects can use a mise.toml file to declare tools, environment variables, and tasks, while global configuration holds personal defaults. mise installs development tools and selects versions per project, supporting hundreds of tools. It can manage project environment variables and automatically activate Python virtual environments when entering projects. Developers can share tasks and run them when files change. Shell activation is documented for bash, zsh, fish, nushell, PowerShell, and other shells. Documentation covers IDE integration and CI examples for GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and Xcode Cloud. Safe mode can prevent project configuration from executing code or injecting environment variables in supported operations, though some backends require code execution and cannot resolve versions in that mode. The project advises reviewing other people's configuration because tasks, hooks, and some environment directives can execute code. mise is a free, open-source command-line tool under the MIT license.
vfox
vfox is a free, Apache 2.0-licensed version manager for development runtimes and SDKs on Linux, macOS and Windows. It supports project, session and global version scopes, and can switch to a project's version when entering its directory. Teams can record tool versions in `.vfox.toml` and share that configuration. A plugin system adds support for tools and environments; its public registry includes community plugins for tools such as Bun, Clang, CMake, Crystal, Dart, Deno and .NET. Plugins that support legacy version files can read formats such as `.nvmrc`, and this capability is enabled by default. Documented shells include PowerShell, Git Bash, Bash, ZSH, Fish, CMD, Clink, Cmder and Nushell. CMD is limited to global scope and is not recommended. For Docker, CI/CD and other non-interactive shells, the documentation recommends `vfox exec` instead of shell activation hooks. The configuration guide lists support for HTTP(S) proxies only. For shared SDK storage on Linux and macOS, the guide recommends group permissions and warns against world-writable access.