head to head · open source
Warp vs WaveTerm
Warp has 65,830 GitHub stars, 5,752 forks, 5,218 open issues and last shipped yesterday. WaveTerm has 22,641 stars, 1,183 forks, 574 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Warp leads on adoption by 191% (65,830 vs 22,641 stars). Warp is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0; WaveTerm is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Warp has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, WaveTerm 5%. Warp was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (linux, macos, terminal), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Warp | WaveTerm | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 66K | ★ 23K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.8K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Warp if
- You weight community size — 66K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick WaveTerm if
- You want the WaveTerm feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and WaveTerm fits your workflow better
About Warp
Website · Code · Agents · Terminal · Drive · Docs · How Warp Works [!NOTE] OpenAI is the founding sponsor of the new, open source Warp repository, and the new agentic management workflows are powered by GPT models. About Warp is an agentic development environment, born out of the terminal. Use Warp's built in coding agent, or bring your own CLI agent (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, and others). Installation You can download Warp and read our docs for platform specific instructions. Warp Contributions Overview Dashboard Explore build.warp.dev to: Watch thousands of Warp Factory agents triage issues, write specs…
About WaveTerm
Wave Terminal English 한국어 繁體中文 Wave is an open source, AI integrated terminal for macOS, Linux, and Windows. It works with any AI model. Bring your own API keys for OpenAI, Claude, or Gemini, or run local models via Ollama and LM Studio. No accounts required. Wave also supports durable SSH sessions that survive network interruptions and restarts, with automatic reconnection. Edit remote files with a built in graphical editor and preview files inline without leaving the terminal. Key Features Wave AI Context aware terminal assistant that reads your terminal output, analyzes widgets, and performs file operations…
read the full WaveTerm overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Warp or WaveTerm more popular?
Warp has 65,830 GitHub stars and WaveTerm has 22,641. Warp has the larger community by that measure.
Are Warp and WaveTerm free?
Both are open source. Warp is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and WaveTerm under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Warp and WaveTerm?
Warp is written in Rust and WaveTerm in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Warp or WaveTerm?
Choose Warp if you want the larger community (65,830 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose WaveTerm if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.