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Alpine vs aerc: catalog facts
Alpine	aerc
Free Free to download and use.	Free Free and open source under the MIT licence.
Windows, Linux, Command line	macOS, Linux, Command line
Lightweight keyboard-driven terminal interface Complete documentation built into the program	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
Text-only interface with no rich HTML rendering Releases are infrequent	Terminal only, with vim-style keybindings to learn HTML mail rendering is a terminal browser, so complex newsletters look poor
Downloadable app	Downloadable app
Open source	Open source
License: Apache-2.0	License: MIT
No account needed	No account needed
Not stated if it works offline	Works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 23, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 21, 2026

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