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aerc vs meli: catalog facts
aerc	meli
Free Free and open source under the MIT licence.	Free Free and open source under the GPLv3.
macOS, Linux, Command line	macOS, Linux, Command line
Composes in an embedded terminal, so you can read other mail while replying Built for the git mailing-list patch workflow, with diff highlighting and repo tabs	Supports IMAP, Maildir, notmuch, JMAP and mbox Plain text configuration with sane defaults
Terminal only, with vim-style keybindings to learn HTML mail rendering is a terminal browser, so complex newsletters look poor	Described by its developers as experimental Non-UTF-8 encodings are read-only
Downloadable app	Downloadable app
Open source	Open source
License: MIT	License: GPL-3.0
No account needed	No account needed
Works offline	Works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 21, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 23, 2026

Catalog facts only. Anything “not stated” is unconfirmed. Check full listings for details.