What is Ghostty used for?

Ghostty is a native, GPU-accelerated terminal emulator with tabs and split panes, plus libghostty, a library for building terminal features into other applications. It is a good fit for daily terminal use on the desktop and embedding a terminal in other applications.

Is Ghostty open source?

Yes. Ghostty is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at ghostty-org/ghostty and is written mainly in Zig.

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

What is Ghostty an alternative to?

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

Is Ghostty actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Ghostty was on 2 October 2026. The project has 62k stars on GitHub.

Ghostty: open-source alternative to Warp

About Ghostty

Ghostty is a terminal emulator that aims to combine speed, a broad feature set and a native user interface, rather than making users choose between them. It uses platform-native UI and GPU acceleration, is written in Zig, and is released under the MIT license.

The project's roadmap covers standards-compliant terminal emulation, competitive performance, rich windowing features such as multiple windows, tabs and panes, and native experiences on each platform. Downloads and documentation are hosted on the Ghostty website, and the repository includes contributor and developer guides.

Ghostty also ships libghostty, a cross-platform, zero-dependency library in C and Zig for building terminal emulators or embedding terminal functionality, such as style parsing, into other software. A minimal example project called Ghostling is provided. Ghostty suits developers who spend much of the day in a terminal and want a native-feeling emulator, and those who want terminal capabilities inside their own applications.

Key features

GPU-accelerated terminal emulation
Platform-native user interface
Multiple windows, tabs and split panes
Standards-compliant terminal behavior
libghostty library for embedding terminals
Zero-dependency C and Zig library

Good fit for

→Daily terminal use on the desktop
→Embedding a terminal in other applications

Built with: Zig
Tags: terminal-emulator; terminal; zig; gpu; libghostty; cross-platform; developer-tools

Ghostty: questions and answers

What is Ghostty used for?: Ghostty is a native, GPU-accelerated terminal emulator with tabs and split panes, plus libghostty, a library for building terminal features into other applications. It is a good fit for daily terminal use on the desktop and embedding a terminal in other applications.
Is Ghostty open source?: Yes. Ghostty is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at ghostty-org/ghostty and is written mainly in Zig.
Is Ghostty free?: Yes. Ghostty is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
What is Ghostty an alternative to?: Ghostty is an open-source alternative to Warp. Other open-source alternatives to Warp include kitty, WezTerm and Alacritty.
Is Ghostty actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Ghostty was on 2 October 2026. The project has 62k stars on GitHub.