NeoMutt
Ranked 3 of 5 terminal email clients by recommenders
Free terminal email client that people find simple, stable and light on resources, and recommend alongside Thunderbird for handling mail.
Free terminal email client that people find simple, stable and light on resources, and recommend alongside Thunderbird for handling mail.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 89%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 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
Well regarded and loved by users
“have heard great things about it and it is definitely worthy of consideration”
Comment from 4 Jun 2026 in “Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left” “I love Neomutt, or Newsboat”
Comment from 24 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: Email.md – Markdown to responsive, email-safe HTML”
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 client | 26 | 0 | 100% | 9 | — | Approved |
| aerc email client | 9 | 0 | 100% | 6 | — | — |
| NeoMuttThis page | 8 | 1 | 89% | 7 | — | — |
| Pine email client | 5 | 1 | 83% | 4 | — | — |
| Alpine email client | 5 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
8 of the 10 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I ended up messing up my maildirs every so often”
“For all its cruft, neomutt is much more accessible in this regard.”
“have heard great things about it and it is definitely worthy of consideration”
“all email is now just a mime encoded minefield”
“I love Neomutt, or Newsboat”
“both Thunderbird and NeoMutt are able to handle this for you and make it effectively seamless”
“It's just fun working with (relatively) simple, stable tools”
“neomutt takes almost nothing”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.