Mutt email client
Hacker ApprovedThe most recommended of 5 terminal email clients
Terminal email client that people praise for its flexibility, speed and keyboard-driven use, and for pairing well with GPG encryption and local IMAP mirrors.
Terminal email client that people praise for its flexibility, speed and keyboard-driven use, and for pairing well with GPG encryption and local IMAP mirrors.
26 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 26
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 26 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 9 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
Flexible, configurable, feature-rich
“no other mail client besides maybe mutt that offers more features and flexibility”
Comment from 10 Jan 2026 in “I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great” “I can open mutt and cmus with a complete different configuration and database”
Comment from 3 Oct 2026 in “Make Tmux the OS” “One of the reasons I like mutt is that I can easily edit the From: header”
Comment from 10 Mar 2026 in “I Love Email (2023)” - Comment from 28 Dec 2025 in “Gpg.fail”
Fast, keyboard-driven, strong muscle memory
“I have so much muscle memory with the mutt email client that nothing else has ever come close”
Comment from 22 Aug 2026 in “Stop Making TUIs” “started getting through my email in half the time in took me using a GUI”
Comment from 10 Dec 2025 in “Putting email in its place with Emacs and Mu4e” “They launch fast, run fast, and you use them fast.”
Comment from 3 May 2026 in “Why TUIs Are Back” Easy GPG encryption
“Learn Mutt and GPG too, it's about 20 minutes of your life”
Comment from 17 Apr 2026 in “US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification” “if you use mutt, it is easy to encrypt emails with gpg”
Comment from 13 Dec 2025 in “Poor Johnny still won't encrypt” Local mirrors and offline backups
“Much better way for continous incremental backups is IMAP client that locally mirrors incomming emails”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “Stranger Things Creator Says Turn Off "Garbage" Settings” “IMAP client that locally mirrors incomming emails”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “Stranger Things Creator Says Turn Off "Garbage" Settings” “Email -> Mbsync+msmtp + mutt. Caching helps there”
Comment from 15 Jan 2026 in “Starlink roam 50GB is now 100GB with unlimited slow speed after that”
Other terminal email clients people recommend
The four most recommended other terminal email clients, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mutt email clientThis page | 26 | 0 | 100% | 9 | — | Approved |
| aerc email client | 9 | 0 | 100% | 6 | — | — |
| NeoMutt | 8 | 1 | 89% | 7 | — | — |
| Pine email client | 5 | 1 | 83% | 4 | — | — |
| Alpine email client | 5 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
25 of the 31 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Open slrn, tin or mutt for extra fun.”
“I can open mutt and cmus with a complete different configuration and database”
“mutt is still being actively developed”
“I have so much muscle memory with the mutt email client that nothing else has ever come close”
“iCloud works fine with imap (ie mutt, thunderbird)”
“because there are still honnest people on internet. mutt forever.”
“Third oldest for me would be mutt, which is still my primary email client.”
“Use a tui client like alpine or mutt”
“They launch fast, run fast, and you use them fast.”
“Learn Mutt and GPG too, it's about 20 minutes of your life”
“I use Mutt and Vim for that, and that's not the command line.”
“Both are far less likely to suffer from bugs than outlook.”
“One of the reasons I like mutt is that I can easily edit the From: header”
“Then you can edit Subject lines to have better search terms.”
“find/scaffold something with mutt oauth script to fetch your mails locally”
“all kinds of handy utils from mc and htop to mutt”
“For example like Mutt does”
“Email -> Mbsync+msmtp + mutt. Caching helps there”
“no other mail client besides maybe mutt that offers more features and flexibility”
“software providing stable interfaces (including for the user)”
“IMAP client that locally mirrors incomming emails”
“Much better way for continous incremental backups is IMAP client that locally mirrors incomming emails”
“it does not lock me into a specific client”
“if you use mutt, it is easy to encrypt emails with gpg”
“started getting through my email in half the time in took me using a GUI”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.