htop
Hacker ApprovedRanked 2 of 8 system monitors by recommenders
Free terminal process viewer that gives a clear overview of resource usage and works well over SSH on servers and desktops.
Free terminal process viewer that gives a clear overview of resource usage and works well over SSH on servers and desktops.
32 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 28
- criticize it
- 4
- approval share
- 88%
Recommended in 11 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: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 28 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 11 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
Same workflow on servers and desktops
“I want to have the same workflow for checking the processes running on a server and on a desktop.”
Comment from 10 Jul 2026 in “Good Tools Are Invisible” “Being able to run vim, htop, etc. on servers is quite useful.”
Comment from 22 Aug 2026 in “Stop Making TUIs” “I install it on every machine where I have control”
Comment from 4 Jul 2026 in “Explanation of everything you can see in htop/top on Linux” Clear, low-effort terminal interface
“good showcases how a TUI reduces mental load and are superior to browsers and / or other GUI tools”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool” “I always see htop as the prime example of a good TUI”
Comment from 3 May 2026 in “Why TUIs Are Back” Runs on very limited hardware
“htop scales all the way down to 40x8 on my TRS-80.”
Comment from 5 Jul 2026 in “Explanation of everything you can see in htop/top on Linux” “I run htop just fine on my handhelds”
Comment from 7 Jan 2026 on Hacker News Better for killing processes
“Htop is better for actually killing processes.”
Comment from 8 Nov 2025 in “Btop: A better modern alternative of htop with a gamified interface” “killing the process in htop”
Comment from 8 Nov 2025 in “Btop: A better modern alternative of htop with a gamified interface”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Annoying, needs manual workaround
“htop does the same and it is indeed annoying!”
Comment from 8 Nov 2025 in “Btop: A better modern alternative of htop with a gamified interface” “But it’s silly that you need to do that.”
Comment from 8 Nov 2025 in “Btop: A better modern alternative of htop with a gamified interface”
Other system monitors people recommend
The four most recommended other system monitors, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| btop | 38 | 11 | 78% | 7 | — | Approved |
| htopThis page | 28 | 4 | 88% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Utilyze | 11 | 2 | 85% | 2 | — | — |
| Stats menu bar system monitor | 10 | 1 | 91% | 5 | — | Approved |
| nvidia-smi | 5 | 4 | 56% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
26 of the 34 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It simply does what it wants to do well: give an overview over resource usage.”
“Being able to run vim, htop, etc. on servers is quite useful.”
“I want to have the same workflow for checking the processes running on a server and on a desktop.”
“IMO that's a rather comfortable way around all the pids, p(s)kills and whatnot else.”
“That was a reason why I kept using htop instead.”
“s for stracing, l for listing open files, and x for which of them are locked”
“htop scales all the way down to 40x8 on my TRS-80.”
“it looks like both doesn’t do musl so that’s out”
“I install it on every machine where I have control”
“htop's code calculates using size_t, which ends up as a 64-bit integer on 64-bit architectures”
“Idk boss, amelius said htop et al were irrelevant so we can't really investigate”
“but it stops the dynamic updates and reordering of process list”
“Settings I change on every htop which makes a HUGE difference.”
“Most popular GUI stuff is from universe, as are quite a few dev tools.”
“I always see htop as the prime example of a good TUI”
“good showcases how a TUI reduces mental load and are superior to browsers and / or other GUI tools”
“all kinds of handy utils from mc and htop to mutt”
“I run htop just fine on my handhelds”
“has a "Tree View" if you press F5 that is pretty handy for this”
“doesn't show accurate process cpu usages”
“But it’s silly that you need to do that.”
“htop does the same and it is indeed annoying!”
“killing the process in htop”
“Htop is better for actually killing processes.”
“And htop is still good enough.”
“I was so happy to switch to htop that had colors!”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.