Ghostty

Fast terminals usually feel like ports. They draw their own tabs, their own title bars, their own approximation of a Mac window, and every shortcut is slightly wrong. Ghostty takes the other route: the rendering is GPU-accelerated through Metal, and the shell around it is an actual SwiftUI application, with real windows, a real menu bar, a settings screen, and AppleScript and Shortcuts support you would expect from a Mac app that was written for the Mac.

In daily use that means native tabs and splits, system text services that behave, and the speed you would otherwise go to Alacritty or Kitty for. Startup is quick and input latency is low enough that the difference against iTerm2 is noticeable when output floods.

It is MIT licensed with no paid tier, which is worth stating plainly in a category where several recent terminals arrived with an account and a subscription attached. Nothing is held back for a Pro plan because there is no Pro plan.

The honest limits: it is young. If you rely on a specific iTerm2 trigger, scripting hook or integration, check it works before you move over, because there is no support desk, only an issue tracker. And if you are on Windows, this is not for you.