head to head · open source
Ghostty vs WezTerm
Ghostty has 63,286 GitHub stars, 3,827 forks, 251 open issues and last shipped yesterday. WezTerm has 29,426 stars, 1,848 forks, 1,849 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. Ghostty leads on adoption by 115% (63,286 vs 29,426 stars). Ghostty is written in Zig under MIT; WezTerm is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence. Ghostty has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, WezTerm 6%. Ghostty was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Ghostty | WezTerm | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 63K | ★ 29K |
| License | MIT | Custom / other |
| Written in | Zig | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.8K | ⑂ 1.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Ghostty if
- You weight community size — 63K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Zig
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick WezTerm if
- You want the WezTerm feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and WezTerm fits your workflow better
About Ghostty
Ghostty Fast, native, feature rich terminal emulator pushing modern features. A native GUI or embeddable library via libghostty . About · Download · Documentation · Contributing · Developing About Ghostty is a terminal emulator that differentiates itself by being fast, feature rich, and native. While there are many excellent terminal emulators available, they all force you to choose between speed, features, or native UIs. Ghostty provides all three. libghostty is a cross platform, zero dependency C and Zig library for building terminal emulators or utilizing terminal functionality (such as style parsing). Anyone…
read the full Ghostty overview →
About WezTerm
Wez's Terminal A GPU accelerated cross platform terminal emulator and multiplexer written by @wez and implemented in Rust User facing docs and guide at: Screenshot of wezterm on macOS, running vim Installation Getting help This is a spare time project, so please bear with me. There are a couple of channels for support: You can use the GitHub issue tracker to see if someone else has a similar issue, or to file a new one. Start or join a thread in our GitHub Discussions; if you have general questions or want to chat with other wezterm users, you're welcome here! There is a Matrix room via Element.io for…
read the full WezTerm overview →
More in Developer Tools
Related comparisons
More Terminals projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Terminals field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Ghostty or WezTerm more popular?
Ghostty has 63,286 GitHub stars and WezTerm has 29,426. Ghostty has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ghostty and WezTerm free?
Both are open source. Ghostty is licensed under MIT, and WezTerm has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Ghostty and WezTerm?
Ghostty is written in Zig and WezTerm in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Ghostty or WezTerm?
Choose Ghostty if you want the larger community (63,286 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose WezTerm if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.