Contour is a terminal emulator with GPU-accelerated rendering, high-DPI support, and features like font ligatures, emoji, and Unicode grapheme clusters.

Is Contour open source?

Yes. Contour is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at contour-terminal/contour and is written mainly in C++.

Yes. Contour is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host Contour?

Yes. Contour can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Contour an alternative to?

Contour is an open-source alternative to Warp. Other open-source alternatives to Warp include Tabby, Alacritty and Ghostty.

Is Contour actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Contour was on 13 October 2026, and the latest release is v0.7.0.8982, published on 17 August 2026. The project has 3k stars on GitHub.

Contour: open-source alternative to Warp

About Contour

Contour is a terminal emulator designed for advanced power users. It offers GPU-accelerated rendering and high-DPI support for smooth performance.

It runs on Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Windows. Features include font ligatures, emoji, Unicode grapheme clusters, vertical line markers, vi-like input modes, runtime configuration reload, customizable key bindings, color schemes, profiles, sixel inline images, clickable hyperlinks, and OSC 52 clipboard support.

Key features

GPU-accelerated rendering
High-DPI support
Font ligatures, emoji, and Unicode grapheme clusters
Vertical line markers and vi-like input modes
Runtime configuration reload and customizable key bindings
Sixel inline images and clickable hyperlinks

Built with: C++ tools
Tags: terminal emulator; gpu-accelerated; high-dpi; unicode; sixel; cross-platform

Contour: questions and answers

What is Contour?: Contour is a terminal emulator with GPU-accelerated rendering, high-DPI support, and features like font ligatures, emoji, and Unicode grapheme clusters.
Is Contour open source?: Yes. Contour is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at contour-terminal/contour and is written mainly in C++.
Is Contour free?: Yes. Contour is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Contour?: Yes. Contour can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Contour an alternative to?: Contour is an open-source alternative to Warp. Other open-source alternatives to Warp include Tabby, Alacritty and Ghostty.
Is Contour actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Contour was on 13 October 2026, and the latest release is v0.7.0.8982, published on 17 August 2026. The project has 3k stars on GitHub.