vterm
Shares rank 18 of 40 terminal emulators by recommenders
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.
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.
25 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 15
- criticize it
- 10
- approval share
- 60%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 15 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 8 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
Fast, used daily inside Emacs
“I use vterm which I believe prides itself for being the fastest terminal emulator inside Emacs”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “Emacs is my new window manager (2015)” “But even locally I use vterm.”
Comment from 2 Apr 2026 in “Emacs-libgterm: Terminal emulator for Emacs using libghostty-vt”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Buggy and clunky to use
“had way too many issues where emacs/vterm was the culprit”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “What's new in Emacs 31.1” “I could never get it to work properly on vterm”
Comment from 13 Jul 2026 in “Ghostel.el: Terminal emulator powered by libghostty” “I find using vterm a bit of a clunky hack.”
Comment from 21 Mar 2026 in “OpenCode – The open source AI coding agent” - Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “What's new in Emacs 31.1”
- Comment from 12 Jul 2026 in “Ghostel.el: Terminal emulator powered by libghostty”
Ghostel seen as better
“things that make Ghostel better than vterm especially when working with those cli agents”
Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “Emacs 31 Is Around the Corner: The Changes I'm Daily Driving” “ghostel is a tremendous improvement over vterm”
Comment from 21 Aug 2026 in “Emacs 31.1 will release on 8/24” “I switched from vterm to ghostel recently”
Comment from 27 Oct 2026 in “Ghostty 1.4” Too slow for some users
“Vterm was acceptable, but still too slow for me”
Comment from 22 Aug 2026 in “Stop Making TUIs” “the rendering even before this was a lot faster than Vterm”
Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “Emacs 31 Is Around the Corner: The Changes I'm Daily Driving”
Other terminal emulators people recommend
The four most recommended other terminal emulators, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ghostty | 401 | 158 | 72% | 12 | 3 mo22 owners | Approved |
| Termux | 188 | 31 | 86% | 12 | 1 yr6 owners | Approved |
| iTerm2 | 95 | 69 | 58% | 12 | 10 yrs4 owners | — |
| Warp terminal | 84 | 86 | 49% | 11 | 1 yr5 owners | — |
| vtermThis page | 15 | 10 | 60% | 8 | — | — |
What people said
18 of the 25 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I switched from vterm to ghostel recently”
“My use case is resuming a session and not being able to scroll back to the past history.”
“vterm just does not cut it for me.”
“had way too many issues where emacs/vterm was the culprit”
“Vterm was acceptable, but still too slow for me”
“ghostel is a tremendous improvement over vterm”
“I had the same problem with vterm when I first tried it. The C module failed to compile”
“I could never get it to work properly on vterm”
“I was struggling with vterm”
“things that make Ghostel better than vterm especially when working with those cli agents”
“the rendering even before this was a lot faster than Vterm”
“Strengths: magit, wgrep, vterm, buffer management, plugins & packaging.”
“managed to fix most of the paper cuts when using shell-mode”
“But even locally I use vterm.”
“I find using vterm a bit of a clunky hack.”
“Emacs vterm can do this. It can even backspace and delete all the text selected.”
“I use vterm which I believe prides itself for being the fastest terminal emulator inside Emacs”
“the "real" (and inferior) thing via vterm”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.