Two of these are free, forever, no account. Ghostty is MIT-licensed, native, GPU-accelerated (it renders through Metal on macOS), and already the benchmark for raw terminal performance. iTerm2 is fifteen years of polish at zero cost. Warp is the one asking for money.
| Price | Pitch | |
|---|---|---|
| Ghostty | free, MIT | fastest, most minimal, GPU-accelerated, Linux + macOS |
| iTerm2 | free | mature, feature-rich, macOS only |
| Warp | free tier, then $15–50/user/mo | AI command generation, Agents, modern UI, collaboration |
Warp's free tier caps AI at 1,000 queries a month and holds back team features. For an individual developer, the free tier covers most of what Warp offers. The paid tiers ($15/user for teams, up to $50) are for people who lean heavily on Warp's AI — command generation from natural language, its Agents feature, block-based output you can share with teammates.
Warp open-sourced its client under AGPL in April 2026, though the AI backend stays closed, and it added Linux support the same year (it was macOS-only before). Ghostty shipped cross-platform from day one; iTerm2 remains macOS-only.
If you want the fastest, most minimal terminal and don't need AI in your shell: Ghostty. If you want a deeply featured macOS terminal with no learning curve and no cost: iTerm2. Pay for Warp only if you'll genuinely use its AI command generation and Agents daily — and even then, try the free tier first, because for a solo developer it's often enough.