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Windows Terminal vs Mintty: catalog facts
Windows Terminal	Mintty
Free Free and open source, published by Microsoft.	Free Free and open source.
Windows	Windows
One window for Command Prompt, PowerShell, WSL distributions and Azure Cloud Shell Tabs, split panes and tab tear-out into separate windows	Thorough xterm and DEC terminal emulation Strong Unicode, bidi and emoji rendering
Windows only, and it needs a reasonably current Windows 10 or 11 It is a terminal, not a shell: the shell you run inside it is still cmd, PowerShell or…	Windows only Needs Cygwin, MSYS2 or WSL underneath to be useful
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 20, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 23, 2026

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