Openlane – Open-source, developer-first platform for automated compliance, risk management, and built-in Trust Center.Learn how Ghostty and iTerm 2 differ in their key features, development activity, technology stack and community adoption, so you can decide which of these terminal emulators is best for you.
Both Ghostty and iTerm 2 have their unique strengths and serve similar purposes effectively. Consider your specific needs regarding popularity, activity, technology, maturity, licensing and features when making your decision.
Ghostty significantly outpaces iTerm 2 in community adoption with 59,155 stars compared to 17,900 stars on GitHub. This 3.3x difference suggests Ghostty has a much larger and more active community. In terms of developer contributions, Ghostty has 3,205 forks, indicating strong developer engagement.
Both projects show recent activity, with Ghostty last updated 3 hours ago and iTerm 2 5 hours ago.
Both tools share common technology foundations, being built with CSS, Bash, Python, C, Objective-C, Swift, C++, MATLAB. However, they differ in their additional technology choices: Ghostty uses GLSL, Zig while iTerm 2 leverages JavaScript, Ruby.
iTerm 2 has been in development longer, starting 15 years ago, compared to Ghostty which began 4 years ago. This 11.1-year head start suggests iTerm 2 may have more mature features and established processes.
Ghostty uses the MIT license, which is more permissive than iTerm 2's GPL-2.0 license, potentially offering greater flexibility for commercial use and integration.
Both tools serve similar use cases in Terminal Emulators.
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