Kitty vs. Warp

Warp and Kitty are both popular terminals that differ in key ways. Warp offers an AI-powered cloud-native terminal solution with seamless collaboration and extensive customization, while Kitty is a robust terminal emulator known for visual customizations, including images, color, configuration files, and mouse support.

Experience a new terminal with Warp
Features
Kitty
Warp Icon
Warp
Product description
Kitty is a terminal emulator designed for power keyboard users.
Warp is a modern, Rust-based terminal with AI built in so you and your team can build great software, faster.
Tagline
N/A
Your terminal, reimagined.
Founded in
2017
2020
Mouse & Cursor Support
No
Yes. Warp’s text input editor is more like a modern IDE with selections, cursor positioning, and completion menus.
AI Integration (Scope & Depth)
Through plugins and external tools
Yes. Warp AI is fully integrated throughout the terminal to suggest commands and make workflows easier.
Collaborative Features
No
Yes. Warp Drive is a space in your terminal where you can securely save and share commands as workflows.
Reusable Workflows or Scripts
No
Yes. Workflows are paramaterized commands you can save, share, and run on-demand.
Built With...
C, Python, Go, OpenGL
Rust
Close or Open Source
Open Source
Closed Source
Cloud Enabled
No
Yes
Requires Log In
No
Yes
Pricing
N/A
Free for individuals; Charge for advanced AI or large team usage
Platform Availability
MacOS, Linux
MacOS (Linux/Windows waitlist)
Feature
Kitty
Warp Icon
Warp
Modern Editing Features

❌ Does not allow mouse positioning in input editor.

❌ Does not have IDE-style editing keyboard shortcuts. NOTE: There are keyboard shortcuts like CTRL-A that allow you to navigate to the beginning of a line, but that is related to the shell and not iTerm2 itself.

🤨iTerm2 does support vim keybindings to edit input, but this requires the developer to run a command (specific to their shell) to get it working.

✅ Supports smart selection (clicking to automatically copy a URL, IP address, etc).

✅ You can click anywhere in your command input with your mouse to edit.

✅ Supports modern editing keyboard shortcuts like CMD+Z to undo, or OPT+RIGHT to navigate to the end of a word.

✅ Supports vim keybindings to edit input. Toggle this on in the settings panel (works across all supported shells).

✅ Supports smart selection (clicking to automatically copy a URL, IP address, etc).

AI

✅Offers basic AI support to generate commands in your terminal based off natural language input. Note that this is currently in beta.

❌UI does not support asking conceptual questions, like “Why can’t I have 2 processes running on the same port.”

❌Has no built-in support for debugging terminal errors using AI.

❌Not free. Users must provide their own OpenAI key before using this AI support within iTerm2.

✅Offers AI support to generate commands in your terminal based off natural language input.

✅Can answer conceptual questions to explain what a command does or show why a certain solution works.

✅Has built-in support for debugging terminal errors using AI.

✅Free, for the first 100 requests per user per day.

Collaboration

❌ No built-in features for collaboration. 

❌ No way to share terminal input or output.

✅Store and share reusable workflows that sync in real-time with a team Warp Drive.

✅Share blocks of terminal input and output with a permalink.

Performance

❌Using VTEbench,

iTerm2 underperformed compared to Warp across all measured benchmarks.

🤨Using Termbench, iTerm2 and Warp had similar performance for regular benchmark sizes but underperformed handling small test sizes.

✅ Mostly written in Objective-C. GPU rendering on by default but can be turned off in settings.

✅Using VTEbench,

Warp is over 90% faster at  scrolling tests, 70% faster at the dense_cell benchmark, and 29% faster on the unicode benchmark.

✅Using Termbench, Warp was 20% faster at handling small data sizes (~1mb) and 3% faster at regular benchmark sizes.

✅ Built with Rust and rendered directly on the GPU, optimizing for speed and responsiveness

Command Input

🤨 Delegates command completions to the shell. Additional configuration necessary for supporting third party tools like git, docker, npm and more that the shell doesn't support out of the box.

❌ Does not support autosuggestions out-of-box. Delegates to the shell.

❌ Does not support alias command completions out-of-box. It delegates to the shell.

🤨iTerm2 supports command history, but it delegates to the shell’s history functionality. According to its documentation, this feature requires some configuration first.

✅Allows user to broadcast input across multiple different sessions.

✅Command completion for 400+ CLI tools, out-of-the-box.

✅Autosuggestion support out-of-box.

Supports aliases in command completion menu.

✅Command history view & search out-of-box.

✅Allows user to broadcast input across multiple different sessions.

Command Output

✅Supports basic search within the terminal output.

❌ Does not support regex in the search bar.

❌ Does not support “bookmarking” a specific command to save it as important.

❌ Does not automatically redact secrets in your command output (IP address, passwords).

❌Does not visually group command input & output into a cohesive unit.

✅Supports basic search within the terminal output.

✅ Supports regex in search. For example, “.b” would highlight any word containing a letter, and then ‘b’. 

✅ Supports “bookmarking” a specific command. This allows the user to come back to important commands during a long session.

✅ Automatically redacts secrets in your command output (IP address, passwords) so your terminal output is more secure.

✅Warp introduces the concept of blocks, which allows you to easily visually distinguish one command from another.

Appearance & UX

✅Allows you to customize font type and size.

✅Allows you to upload a custom background image.

✅Allows you to toggle window transparency.

❌Does not allow you to toggle where your input editor is positioned.

✅Allows you show important information like host name, clock, git state & more through the status bar. NOTE: iTerm2 has a couple of components more than Warp here, offering information like CPU and memory utilization as well.

✅Allows you to customize font type and size.

✅Allows you to upload a custom background image.

✅Allows you to toggle window transparency.

✅ Allows you to easily toggle whether your input is positioned at the top or bottom of your terminal, for visual and ergonomic benefits.

✅Allows you to show important information like host name, timestamp, git state & more through the prompt. Also allows you to easily edit the default prompt using a drag-and-drop GUI.

Window & Pane Management

✅ Allows split panes.

✅ Allows coloring and renaming tabs.

✅ Supports quake mode (referred to as hotkey window in iTerm2).

✅ Supports extensibility. Allows you to access sessions, tabs, and windows through a Python API.✅ Supports tmux though configuring “control-mode”

✅ Allows split panes.

✅ Allows coloring and renaming tabs.

✅ Supports quake mode (referred to as hotkey window in iTerm2).

✅ Supports extensibility. Allows you to configure windows, panes, and commands-on-start using launch configurations. Edit the configs using .yaml files.

🤨Tmux support exists but conflicts with Warp features like blocks.

Configurability

✅Has GUI option to configure setting (unlike other terminals, which just offer a config file).

✅Allows you to configure your keyboard shortcuts.

❌No command palette. Search through the Mac Help menu.

✅Has GUI option to configure setting (unlike other terminals, which just offer a config file).

✅Allows you to configure your keyboard shortcuts.

✅Offers a command palette (similar to Mac Spotlight or Raycast) to search many configurability options within the application.

Platform Support

✅Mac

❌Linux

❌Windows

✅Mac

✅Linux

❌Windows (Coming soon)

Kitty vs. Warp

Warp is a Rust-based, AI-powered cloud-native terminal with a fully-fledged text editor that works like an IDE. Warp also offers the functionality to create and share workflows within teams via Warp Drive. kitty is a simple, modular, and hackable terminal designed for power keyboard users. kitty supports all modern terminal features and only uses OpenGL for rendering everything. With a powerful framework for scripting, kitty offers the functionality to extend its functionality via small terminal programs. Both Warp and kitty offer a broad set of features, some similar and some unique, resulting in a unique user experience and distinct learning curves. 

Warp’s Value Propositions

AI Integration

Warp AI is an explicitly opt-in feature that enables users to debug errors, explain outputs, write scripts, or provide a walk-through of an entire workflow. Users can also use natural language to prompt Warp AI from within the terminal. Warp AI is also capable of providing command suggestions and can help users write commands that they might be unsure about.

Mouse and Cursor Support

Warp offers a robust set of mouse and cursor support features including configuration of mouse scroll events, session navigation via mouse click, smart selection via double-click, and auto-complete suggestion selection via a mouse click just to name a few. Warp even allows you to change the appearance of the cursor.

Warp Drive

Warp Drive is a workspace within the Warp terminal that allows users to save workflows and then share those workflows with a team. All workflows that are stored in the Warp drive sync immediately and are then made available across the team instantly ensuring that everyone always has access to the latest version of the workflow.

Command Correction

Warp’s built-in command correction catches typos and forgotten flags in previously run commands and then provides auto-correct suggestions. Command correction also provides suggestions to mitigate general console errors. Warp’s command correction can even determine the missing permissions required to run a command and then provide suggestions of commands with permissions added.

Secret Redaction

Warp’s Secret Redaction feature automatically attempts to redact secrets and sensitive information in terminal output including passwords, IP addresses, API keys, and PII. This feature detects sensitive information using default regex patterns and then simply uses lock icons to redact the information. Warp also allows you to create and add custom regex secret patterns.

FAQ Section

Is Warp a good terminal?

Warp is an excellent terminal and is especially useful for working with workflows that need to be shared with a team. It also provides AI-based command suggestions, command correction, secret redaction, and vastly superior mouse and cursor support than any other terminal out there.

What is the difference between kitty and warp terminal?

Warp is a terminal with AI built-in and allows teams to collaborate and share commands for onboarding and incident response. It offers nearly everything kitty has to offer and then some. 

kitty is mostly targeted toward power keyboard users and is very limited when it comes to mouse and cursor support features but excels when it comes to layout and font control.

Is Warp better than kitty?

Warp is a much more robust and powerful tool compared to kitty. The Warp terminal provides more unique and default features such as AI integrations and collaborative tools than kitty. Customization is also much easier with the Warp terminal via the prompt, theme, and numerous other options.

What is similar to warp dev?

iTerm2, kitty, Impulse, Teleport, and Termius are somewhat similar to Warp, but there are no equal or direct alternatives to the bundle of features that Warp has to offer including AI integration, command correction, Warp Drive, and mouse and cursor support.

Warp vs kitty Feature Expansion

Feature Warp kitty
AI Integration Fully integrated Warp AI that explains output from the terminal, suggests error fixes, automatically writes scripts for you by taking input via natural language, walks you through installation setups, and shows examples of how to achieve a desired output or how a command can be written to achieve a specific task. kitty doesn't offer any AI Integrations but with the help of kitty terminal programs called kittens, a limited set of features such as terminal suggestions can be implemented and extended within a kitty terminal. For features that are currently unavailable, custom kittens can be developed based on your specific needs.
Notifications & Audible Bell Warp can initiate customizable desktop notifications if you are away from the app, which allows you to quickly refocus when a sufficiently meaningful event takes place in the Warp terminal. Notification can also be configured to initiate after a set time period or when a command completes and you need to enter a password to proceed. kitty does have the ability to set up desktop notifications but the feature is very limited and doesn't provide any sound feedback. It uses extensible escape code (OSC 99) to implement notifications, the setting up of which is fairly complicated compared to the simple configuration that Warp offers using UI.
Secret Redaction Warp's Secret Redaction, using a list of regex patterns, detects sensitive data in the output of your terminal and then replaces the sensitive data on the screen with lock icons and even prevents the sensitive data from being copied. You can click on the lock icon to display a tooltip to reveal the secret. kitty doesn't have anything similar to the Secret Redaction features that Warp has but it does contain Mark functionality, which highlights the texts in long-running command outputs. In theory, the Mark feature can be extended using kitten to redact in addition to marking any specific text using regular expressions.
Markdown Viewer Warp has the ability to display Markdown files directly in a split pane. Warp treats any locally stored file with .md or .markdown extension as a Markdown file.
You can also tweak the configuration in Warp to allow Warp to open markdown files with an external editor or Warp's built-in markdown viewer.
kitty doesn't have any built-in support for opening markdown files in a split pane. The only method that kitty offers is to use kitty's terminal graphic protocol to integrate third-party packages such as mdcat to open and view any markdown files formatted with images within the terminal itself.
Sessions Warp allows you to configure sessions via a beautifully crafted UI. Warp's Launch Configurations supports saving a configuration of windows, tabs, and panes to open later. Session Navigation enables you to easily navigate to any session in Warp. Session Restoration automatically restores the window and tabs from your previous session. kitty allows you to create a session file with which you can control the tabs, terminal window layout, working directory, startup programs, and more but with several limitations. One of the limitations is that the launch command when used in a session file cannot create new OS windows or tabs.
Keyboard Shortcuts In addition to a plethora of built-in keyboard shortcuts, Warp comes equipped with some Warp-specific keyboard shortcuts including Warp Essentials, Block, and Input Editor shortcuts. Warp also offers you the ability to create your own personal customizable shortcuts. In Warp, you also have the ability to remap existing keyboard shortcuts. kitty also comes with numerous built-in keyboard shortcuts and offers its users the ability to map actions to any key press or mouse action using a configuration file. Copy/Paste actions, Debugging actions, Layout actions, Mark actions, and several Misc. actions can be mapped to any key or combination of keys.
Command History While running, Warp isolates the history of each shell session and combines the history upon closing. Hitting ↑ in the input editor brings up the history. If you type anything in the command history, Warp will use fuzzy search to filter commands and turn regular text to bold if there is a match. kitty supports a basic command history search. To access the history you can use the ↑ keyboard to bring up the history. kitty also allows you to search the history in more detail with the ctrl+shift+h shortcut, which opens the command history in a pager program.
Syntax and Error Highlighting Warp supports syntax highlighting by coloring each part of a command to help differentiate between sub-commands, options/flags, arguments, and variables. Warp also highlights errors in commands that are typed within the input editor. Warp automatically recognizes each part of the command as you type and syntactically highlights them kitty doesn't come with any built-in syntax and error highlighting feature like Warp does, rather kitty allows its users to manually add such configurations via shell plugins.
Shell Integration Warp supports bash, fish, zsh
docker exec, gcloud compute ssh, eb ssh, and poetry shell integration as subshells, which are interactive shell sessions that are spawned and run within the context of an existing, running shell. Warp will prompt you and invite you to "Warpify" the subshell which makes all of the modern IDE features of Warp available in that subshell.
kitty has the ability to integrate closely within common shells, such as zsh, fish, and bash to enable features such as jumping to previous prompts in the scrollback, and viewing the output of the last command in a pager such as less.
Split Panes The Split Panes feature allows you to divide a tab into multiple rectangular panes, each of which is a unique terminal session. You can split panes to the right with CMD-D and down with SHIFT-CMD-D or in any direction by right-clicking on any pane. kitty comes built-in with seven different pane layouts: Fat, Grid, Horizontal, Split, Stack, Tall, and Vertical. By default, all layouts are enabled and you can switch between layouts using the ctrl+shift+l key combination.

Conclusion

Warp is much more powerful out-of-the-box and offers an AI-powered cloud-native terminal solution with seamless collaboration and extensive customization. While kitty can be customized and extended to include a robust set of features, Warp offers powerful default  features such as team collaboration, AI Integration, sound alerts, secret redaction, markdown viewer, syntax and error highlighting, and configurable sessions. 

Warp vs iTerm2 Summary

Warp and iTerm2 are both excellent terminal options for developers on MacOS. Warp is the better solution for you if you need cross-platform support (e.g. Linux). Developers who use Warp instead of iTerm2 prefer it for the modern editing experience, integrated AI, and built-in completions that work out-of-the-box. If you’re coming to Warp from iTerm2, you may want to explore Warp’s Appearance, Themes, and Settings. There’s a lot of nice UX included so you might not need to spend as much time tinkering or running scripts to get your terminal ready for use.

FAQs

How do I migrate from iTerm2 to Warp?

Download Warp and follow the onboarding steps to get started. If you have any configuration settings on your .zshrc file, Warp will automatically recognize these.

What are the benefits of the Warp terminal?

The key benefits of Warp are its speed and user experience. Warp is fast and allows developers to work more quickly and more accurately on the command line. With features like a modern editor, integrated AI, and a drive to store commonly used commands, developers who use Warp can save hours every week.

Is Warp terminal secure?

Warp is designed to offer a secure terminal environment with zero configuration. Your data in Warp is secure and confidential. Paid plans for teams include features admins can use to further manage and restrict access. By default, Warp does not transmit any input or output data on the command line to any server. Console data is all local, except if a user expressly opts in to using a cloud feature like Block Sharing, Warp AI or Warp Drive.

What AI does Warp terminal use?

Warp’s AI is powered by OpenAI’s enterprise-grade APIs. Data is sent to OpenAI through a proxy, encrypted in transit, and never used to train public models.

Experience the power of Warp

  • Write with an IDE-style editor
  • Easily navigate through output
  • Save commands to reuse later
  • Ask Warp AI to explain or debug
  • Customize keybindings and launch configs
  • Pick from preloaded themes or design your own
brew install --cask warp
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Kitty vs. Warp

Warp and Kitty are both popular terminals that differ in key ways. Warp offers an AI-powered cloud-native terminal solution with seamless collaboration and extensive customization, while Kitty is a robust terminal emulator known for visual customizations, including images, color, configuration files, and mouse support.

Warp and iTerm2 are both popular terminals recommended by developers. iTerm2 is a very feature-rich traditional terminal whereas Warp has a more modern editing experience.

Developers switching to Warp from iTerm2 often want a more intuitive experience, with less required configuration, where they can work with teammates and use AI to help them get more done.

Features
Kitty
Warp
Product DescriptionKitty is a terminal emulator designed for power keyboard users.Warp is a modern, Rust-based terminal with AI built in so you and your team can build great software, faster.
TaglineN/AYour terminal, reimagined.
Founded In20172020
Mouse & Cursor SupportNoYes. Warp’s text input editor is more like a modern IDE with selections, cursor positioning, and completion menus.
AI Integration (Scope & Depth)Through plugins and external toolsYes. Warp AI is fully integrated throughout the terminal to suggest commands and make workflows easier.
Collaborative FeaturesNoYes. Warp Drive is a space in your terminal where you can securely save and share commands as workflows.
Reusable Workflows Or ScriptsNoYes. Workflows are paramaterized commands you can save, share, and run on-demand.
Built With...C, Python, Go, OpenGLRust
Close Or Open SourceOpen SourceClosed Source
Cloud EnabledNoYes
Requires Log InNoYes
PricingN/AFree for individuals; Charge for advanced AI or large team usage
Platform AvailabilityMacOS, LinuxMacOS and Linux (Windows waitlist)
Features
Kitty
Warp
Modern Editing Features
❌ Does not allow mouse positioning in input editor.

❌ Does not have IDE-style editing keyboard shortcuts.

NOTE: There are keyboard shortcuts like CTRL-A that allow you to navigate to the beginning of a line, but that is related to the shell and not iTerm2 itself.

🤨 iTerm2 does support vim keybindings to edit input, but this requires the developer to run a command (specific to their shell) to get it working.

✅ Supports smart selection (clicking to automatically copy a URL, IP address, etc).
✅ You can click anywhere in your command input with your mouse to edit.

✅ Supports modern editing keyboard shortcuts like CMD+Z to undo, or OPT+RIGHT to navigate to the end of a word.

✅ Supports vim keybindings to edit input. Toggle this on in the settings panel (works across all supported shells).

✅ Supports smart selection (clicking to automatically copy a URL, IP address, etc).
AI
✅ Offers basic AI support to generate commands in your terminal based off natural language input. Note that this is currently in beta.

❌ UI does not support asking conceptual questions, like “Why can’t I have 2 processes running on the same port.”

❌ Has no built-in support for debugging terminal errors using AI.

❌ Not free. Users must provide their own OpenAI key before using this AI support within iTerm2.
✅ Offers AI support to generate commands in your terminal based off natural language input.

✅ Can answer conceptual questions to explain what a command does or show why a certain solution works.

✅ Has built-in support for debugging terminal errors using AI.

✅ Free for the first 100 requests per user per day.
Collaboration
❌ No built-in features for collaboration.

❌ No way to share terminal input or output.
✅ Store and share reusable workflows that sync in real-time with a team Warp Drive.

✅ Share blocks of terminal input and output with a permalink.
Performance
❌ Using VTEbench, iTerm2 underperformed compared to Warp across all measured benchmarks.

🤨 Using Termbench, iTerm2 and Warp had similar performance for regular benchmark sizes but underperformed handling small test sizes.

✅ Mostly written in Objective-C. GPU rendering on by default but can be turned off in settings.
✅ Using VTEbench, Warp is over 90% faster at  scrolling tests, 70% faster at the dense_cell benchmark, and 29% faster on the unicode benchmark.

✅ Using Termbench, Warp was 20% faster at handling small data sizes (~1mb) and 3% faster at regular benchmark sizes.

✅ Built with Rust and rendered directly on the GPU, optimizing for speed and responsiveness
Command Input
🤨 Delegates command completions to the shell. Additional configuration necessary for supporting third party tools like git, docker, npm and more that the shell doesn't support out of the box.

❌ Does not support autosuggestions out-of-box. Delegates to the shell.

❌ Does not support alias command completions out-of-box. It delegates to the shell.

🤨 iTerm2 supports command history, but it delegates to the shell’s history functionality. According to its documentation, this feature requires some configuration first.

✅ Allows user to broadcast input across multiple different sessions.
❌ Does not allow mouse positioning in input editor.

✅ Command completion for 400+ CLI tools, out-of-the-box.

✅ Autosuggestion support out-of-box.

✅ Supports aliases in command completion menu.

✅ Command history view & search out-of-box.

✅ Allows user to broadcast input across multiple different sessions.
Command Output
✅ Supports basic search within the terminal output.

❌ Does not support regex in the search bar.

❌ Does not support “bookmarking” a specific command to save it as important.

❌ Does not automatically redact secrets in your command output (IP address, passwords).

❌ Does not visually group command input & output into a cohesive unit.
✅ Supports basic search within the terminal output.

✅ Supports regex in search. For example, “.b” would highlight any word containing a letter, and then ‘b’.

✅ Supports “bookmarking” a specific command. This allows the user to come back to important commands during a long session.

✅ Automatically redacts secrets in your command output (IP address, passwords) so your terminal output is more secure.

✅ Warp introduces the concept of blocks, which allows you to easily visually distinguish one command from another.
Appearance & UX
✅ Allows you to customize font type and size.

✅ Allows you to upload a custom background image.

✅ Allows you to toggle window transparency.

❌ Does not allow you to toggle where your input editor is positioned.

✅ Allows you show important information like host name, clock, git state & more through the status bar. NOTE: iTerm2 has a couple of components more than Warp here, offering information like CPU and memory utilization as well.
✅ Allows you to customize font type and size.

✅ Allows you to upload a custom background image.

✅ Allows you to toggle window transparency.

✅ Allows you to easily toggle whether your input is positioned at the top or bottom of your terminal, for visual and ergonomic benefits.

✅ Allows you to show important information like host name, timestamp, git state & more through the prompt. Also allows you to easily edit the default prompt using a drag-and-drop GUI.
Window & Pane Management
✅ Allows split panes.

✅ Allows coloring and renaming tabs.

✅ Supports quake mode (referred to as hotkey window in iTerm2).

✅ Supports extensibility. Allows you to access sessions, tabs, and windows through a Python API.

✅ Supports tmux though configuring “control-mode”
✅ Allows split panes.

✅ Allows coloring and renaming tabs.

✅ Supports quake mode (referred to as hotkey window in iTerm2).

✅ Supports extensibility. Allows you to configure windows, panes, and commands-on-start using launch configurations. Edit the configs using .yaml files.

🤨Tmux support exists but conflicts with Warp features like blocks.
Configurability
✅ Has GUI option to configure setting (unlike other terminals, which just offer a config file).

✅ Allows you to configure your keyboard shortcuts.

❌ No command palette. Search through the Mac Help menu.
✅ Has GUI option to configure setting (unlike other terminals, which just offer a config file).

✅ Allows you to configure your keyboard shortcuts.

✅ Offers a command palette (similar to Mac Spotlight or Raycast) to search many configurability options within the application.
Platform Support
✅ Mac

❌ Linux

❌ Windows
✅ Mac

✅ Linux

❌ Windows (Coming soon)

FAQs