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Alpine vs meli: catalog facts
Alpine	meli
Free Free to download and use.	Free Free and open source under the GPLv3.
Windows, Linux, Command line	macOS, Linux, Command line
Lightweight keyboard-driven terminal interface Complete documentation built into the program	Supports IMAP, Maildir, notmuch, JMAP and mbox Plain text configuration with sane defaults
Text-only interface with no rich HTML rendering Releases are infrequent	Described by its developers as experimental Non-UTF-8 encodings are read-only
Downloadable app	Downloadable app
Open source	Open source
License: Apache-2.0	License: GPL-3.0
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 23, 2026

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