# vterm

15 Hacker News commenters recommended vterm and 10 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend it as a fast terminal emulator inside Emacs that they use daily. Critics often find it slow, clunky or buggy, and several prefer Ghostel.

## Why people recommend it

- Fast, used daily inside Emacs (2 comments): "I use vterm which I believe prides itself for being the fastest terminal emulator inside Emacs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46193610)) "But even locally I use vterm." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47615454))

## What people warn about

- Buggy and clunky to use (5 comments): "had way too many issues where emacs/vterm was the culprit" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49435007)) "I could never get it to work properly on vterm" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48897820)) "I find using vterm a bit of a clunky hack." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47464766))
- Ghostel seen as better (3 comments): "things that make Ghostel better than vterm especially when working with those cli agents" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48592230)) "ghostel is a tremendous improvement over vterm" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49386013)) "I switched from vterm to ghostel recently" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50264000))
- Too slow for some users (2 comments): "Vterm was acceptable, but still too slow for me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49400244)) "the rendering even before this was a lot faster than Vterm" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48585950))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Ghostty](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ghostty.md): 401 recommend
- [Termux](https://hackerapproved.com/p/termux.md): 188 recommend
- [iTerm2](https://hackerapproved.com/p/iterm2.md): 95 recommend
- [Warp terminal](https://hackerapproved.com/p/warp-terminal.md): 84 recommend
- [Kitty terminal emulator](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kitty.md): 79 recommend

## Cite as

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