# btop

38 Hacker News commenters recommended btop and 11 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** A colorful terminal resource monitor that shows CPU, memory, GPU and IO in one screen with good defaults. Critics say it needs recent compilers and changes config files on use.

## Why people recommend it

- Attractive, colorful, well designed UI (6 comments): "It’s very informative, well designed for a TUI, and shows me everything I need to see" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48792077)) "it's the kind of modern interface, useful and informative, that I needed." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48785704)) "My favorite part about btop is how smooth the color gradient is" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45857894))
- Lightweight and fast (4 comments): "uses fewer resources, but is in general a better designed-UI" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48792779)) "Simple. Clean. Efficient. Lightweight." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49398660)) "The binary is 2.6MB and runs great." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45858733))
- Shows more information than htop (5 comments): "btop in contrast, currently shows me: GPU utilization (graph/historic+current), clock speed, power-state, power usage" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45858843)) "Lots of quality of life changes. Maybe some of them can be done in htop but with btop it's right in your face" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45858168)) "I like both the look and the information density of btop over htop out of the box." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45859156))
- Replaces htop, top and other monitors (4 comments): "It's slowly growing on me too. Htop is defined in my muscle memory, but more and more of my systems now have btop installed as well.." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45858890)) "has everything htop/top provides plus it shows the usage of GPUs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45858021)) "it even replaced iStatMenu on my brand new MacBook" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48785850))

## What people warn about

- Hard to build on older systems (2 comments): "I don't like that what's supposed to be a very basic system utility relies on compilers not available except in the newest of distributions" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45858667)) "it looks like both doesn’t do musl so that’s out" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48789259))
- Cluttered, busy interface (2 comments): "the top lines bend down to meet the titles and create clutter" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45858367)) "I personally can't stand its interface, I don't need bells and whistles in my terminal." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48787872))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [htop](https://hackerapproved.com/p/htop.md): 28 recommend
- [Stats menu bar system monitor](https://hackerapproved.com/p/stats.md): 10 recommend
- [nvidia-smi](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nvidia-smi.md): 5 recommend
- [Activity Monitor for macOS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/activity-monitor.md): 5 recommend
- [iStat Menus](https://hackerapproved.com/p/istat-menus.md): 5 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "btop", https://hackerapproved.com/p/btop/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).