Alternatives to Contour Terminal
Run shell sessions in a GPU-rendered terminal emulator. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Contour Terminal
Run shell sessions in a GPU-rendered terminal emulator.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Contour Terminal.
Alacritty
A deliberately minimal OpenGL terminal that leaves multiplexing and tabs to other programs and just draws text fast.
Alacritty is another Apache-2.0 GPU terminal for Windows, macOS and Linux, adding Vi mode and scrollback search, but it has no tabs by design.
WezTerm
A GPU-accelerated terminal that is also a multiplexer, configured in Lua and the same on every platform.
WezTerm keeps GPU rendering and ligatures on all three desktop platforms and adds built-in multiplexing and Lua configuration, under the MIT license.
kitty
GPU-accelerated terminal with tabs, splits, graphics and a kitten scripting system.
kitty adds splits, inline image display and kittens for scripting, but has no Windows build and is licensed GPL-3.0 instead of Apache-2.0.
Ghostty
A GPU-accelerated terminal that uses the real native interface of the platform instead of drawing its own.
Ghostty offers GPU rendering with native window chrome and thorough terminal emulation, but only on macOS and Linux, with no built-in multiplexer.
Rio
Use a configurable terminal emulator across desktop platforms.
Rio is an MIT-licensed configurable terminal emulator for Windows, macOS and Linux, providing a modern interface for shell sessions.
Windows Terminal
Microsoft’s tabbed terminal for Windows, hosting Command Prompt, PowerShell and WSL in one GPU-rendered window.
Windows Terminal provides GPU-accelerated rendering, tabs and split panes with full Unicode support, but runs only on Windows and is configured by editing JSON.
Also worth comparing
These listings name Contour Terminal as their own alternative, so the relationship runs both ways.
Mintty
A terminal emulator for Cygwin, MSYS2 and WSL on Windows with thorough xterm compatibility.
Contour is a GPU-rendered Apache-2.0 terminal with ligatures, Unicode and tabs across Windows, macOS and Linux, needing a compatible graphics setup.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
tmux
Keeps terminal sessions alive on a server after you disconnect, and splits one window into many.
Nerd Fonts
A collection of programming fonts patched with thousands of icons, plus a patcher for adding them to other fonts.
Gogh
A collection of hundreds of terminal color schemes, installed into your terminal with a single command.
Zellij
A terminal multiplexer that tells you its own shortcuts on screen, so you can use it on day one.
