Alacritty
Hacker ApprovedRanked 12 of 40 terminal emulators by recommenders
Fast, lightweight, GPU-rendered terminal that people find simple, reliable and cross-platform. Common caveat: no tabs or pane splitting, so people pair it with tmux or Zellij.
Fast, lightweight, GPU-rendered terminal that people find simple, reliable and cross-platform. Common caveat: no tabs or pane splitting, so people pair it with tmux or Zellij.
52 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 38
- criticize it
- 14
- approval share
- 73%
Recommended in 12 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 38 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 12 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Fast, lightweight, simple
“so much better than all the electron ones”
Comment from 12 May 2026 in “Show HN: Alacritree, terminal with built-in worktree management” “Alacritty is simple and blazing fast”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Ghostty is now non-profit” Reliable across operating systems
“Alacritty is an awesome terminal emulator that'll run on Windows”
Comment from 3 May 2026 in “Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March” “simple reliable and in every OS”
Comment from 27 Mar 2026 in “Ask HN: What's your desktop setup optimized to work with AI?” Long-term satisfaction and dependability
“I've been successfully using alacritty in several projects”
Comment from 27 Oct 2026 in “Ghostty 1.4” “I have been pretty happy with Alacritty for a while”
Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions” Pairs well with Zellij
“zellij + alacritty is definitely worth having in your list of options!”
Comment from 2 Mar 2026 in “Ghostty – Terminal Emulator” “Alacritty plus Zellij works great for me.”
Comment from 2 Oct 2026 in “Pi 1.0”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
No tabs or pane splitting
“the lack of tabs is not acceptable for the moment”
Comment from 1 Mar 2026 in “Ghostty – Terminal Emulator” “Alacritty doesn't support pane splitting”
Comment from 27 Oct 2026 in “Ghostty 1.4” Ligatures not supported
“they've had an open issue to support ligatures since 2017 and they're not in a rush to implement them”
Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions” “Alacritty and Foot do not support ligatures”
Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Ghostty is now non-profit” Slow to accept feature requests
“Alacritty is very minimal and rejects community PRs for features often driven by their general ethos.”
Comment from 27 Oct 2026 in “Ghostty 1.4” “the developer was not exactly receptive to fixing them since they occur on macOS and not his preferred OS of Linux”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “Ghostty compiled to WASM with xterm.js API compatibility” Search and accessibility lag behind
“most GPU-rendered terminal emulators don't engage in system-provided accessibility APIs AT ALL”
Comment from 4 May 2026 in “The text mode lie: why modern TUIs are a nightmare for accessibility” “Alacritty's search is less useful than Ghostty's implementation”
Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Ghostty is now non-profit”
Other terminal emulators people recommend
The four most recommended other terminal emulators, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ghostty | 401 | 158 | 72% | 12 | 3 mo22 owners | Approved |
| Termux | 188 | 31 | 86% | 12 | 1 yr6 owners | Approved |
| iTerm2 | 95 | 69 | 58% | 12 | 10 yrs4 owners | — |
| Warp terminal | 84 | 86 | 49% | 11 | 1 yr5 owners | — |
| AlacrittyThis page | 38 | 14 | 73% | 12 | — | Approved |
What people said
40 of the 55 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“After trying out all the others ghostty, alacritty etc.”
“Alacritty doesn't support pane splitting”
“Alacritty is very minimal and rejects community PRs for features often driven by their general ethos.”
“I've been successfully using alacritty in several projects”
“It's definitely my first choice of the bunch, followed by Alacritty.”
“Alacritty plus Zellij works great for me.”
“Funding should go to projects near the foundation of Linux (say Gnome or Kde or alacritty itself)”
“It makes using my pc a lot more comfortable”
“I could stick with (at least) alacritty or ghostty and not be much slower.”
“I’ll use e.g. alacri/ghost/ki/tty instead.”
“Cool Rust libraries enable this like alacritty for the terminal”
“so much better than all the electron ones”
“Both blow the doors off alacritty though.”
“most GPU-rendered terminal emulators don't engage in system-provided accessibility APIs AT ALL”
“Alacritty is an awesome terminal emulator that'll run on Windows”
“I'd love to see the Alacritty terminal backend swapped out with libghostty”
“it works perfectly out of the box on alacritty for me”
“the mouse gesture I have Alacritty using for links doesn't seem to work through tmux”
“simple reliable and in every OS”
“I went with Alacritty as the terminal backend because its core is written in pure rust.”
“Foot/Alacritty also feel amazing”
“zellij + alacritty is definitely worth having in your list of options!”
“I keep coming back to alacritty on Linux”
“the lack of tabs is not acceptable for the moment”
“Alacritty supports it, for example.”
“I prefer to avoid tabs and use alacritty for that reason.”
“I find alacrity sway and Firefox together make it a good experience.”
“Alacritty, Kakoune come to mind”
“It's the closest I've got to fully working.”
“Alacritty's search is less useful than Ghostty's implementation”
“Alacritty and Foot do not support ligatures”
“has a large number of users due only to its own merits”
“I've heard Alacritty is great.”
“That's why I'm staying on Alacritty on my company mac.”
“Alacritty is simple and blazing fast”
“the developer was not exactly receptive to fixing them since they occur on macOS and not his preferred OS of Linux”
“I'll happily keep using alacritty, konsole and xterm, thanks.”
“they've had an open issue to support ligatures since 2017 and they're not in a rush to implement them”
“I have been pretty happy with Alacritty for a while”
“I gotta say that I respect their decision, very good call.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.