OpenTUI
Ranked 8 of 14 terminal UI libraries by recommenders
Feature-rich TUI library with a modern custom renderer. Several apps switched to it and reported better results.
Feature-rich TUI library with a modern custom renderer. Several apps switched to it and reported better results.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 89%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not 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 6 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
Modern renderer and architecture
“doing some really interesting stuff in this space with their custom renderer”
Comment from 6 Mar 2026 in “The next generations of Bubble Tea, Lip Gloss, and Bubbles are available now” “OpenTUI's architect is more modern”
Comment from 25 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: Gridland: make terminal apps that also run in the browser” Apps improved after switching to it
“opencode moved to a different library (opentui?) and their client seems to be doing much better.”
Comment from 22 Feb 2026 in “When Code is Free, Why is Claude is an Electron app?” “they fixed it by switching from ink to opentui”
Comment from 26 Jun 2026 in “Ask HN: Where is our profession (programmer) going?” Works with Bun and Node.js
“Their backend, OpenTUI, is a large part of this, and was built in close correspondence with the Bun folks.”
Comment from 2 Dec 2025 in “Anthropic acquires Bun” “There is some really cool work to port opencode's underlying opentui to Node.js”
Comment from 9 May 2026 in “Bun's experimental Rust rewrite hits 99.8% test compatibility on Linux x64 glibc”
Other terminal UI libraries people recommend
The four most recommended other terminal UI libraries, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ratatui | 57 | 6 | 90% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Bubble Tea | 37 | 16 | 70% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Textual | 34 | 2 | 94% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Turbo Vision | 26 | 5 | 84% | 9 | — | Approved |
| OpenTUIThis page | 8 | 1 | 89% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
9 of the 11 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“binary size was much more than i expected and that irked me”
“they fixed it by switching from ink to opentui”
“There is some really cool work to port opencode's underlying opentui to Node.js”
“OpenTUI's architect is more modern”
“I personally love what the openTUI folks have been up to.”
“doing some really interesting stuff in this space with their custom renderer”
“ive seen the opentui docs and it seems extremely feature rich”
“opencode moved to a different library (opentui?) and their client seems to be doing much better.”
“Their backend, OpenTUI, is a large part of this, and was built in close correspondence with the Bun folks.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.