Comparison
Cross Platform Terminal vs Hyper
An Electron terminal built on web standards, designed around a JavaScript plugin system. Hyper’s own site →
| Feature | Cross Platform Terminal | Hyper |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms | Linux, Windows (macOS in progress) | macOS, Windows, Linux |
| Windows | Native, identical to the Linux build | Native |
| Licence | Proprietary | MIT, open source |
| Price | €7.49/month or €67.41/year, no free tier | Free |
| Rendering | GPU, whole grid in one draw call | Electron and web technologies |
| Configuration | In-app settings, per-profile | A JavaScript config file, extended by plugins |
| Session persistence | Opt-in detachable sessions, no multiplexer needed | None built in |
| Agent awareness | Detects 8 agent CLIs and reports five states per pane | None |
Where Hyper is the better choice
- Free, on all three platforms, and the plugin model is plain JavaScript — if you write web code, you can extend your terminal in an afternoon.
- A large catalogue of community themes and plugins.
Where CPT is the better choice
- Rendering performance: a single GPU draw call for the grid against a DOM-based renderer.
- Detachable sessions, dockable panels, pinned panes and per-view layouts.
- Active release cadence — CPT ships accepted fixes usually the same day, listed with dates at /changelog. Hyper's latest tagged release is v3.4.1, from January 2023.
The short version
Hyper is worth it for the plugin story if you want to script your terminal in JavaScript, and it is free. If you want speed, persistence and a maintained release cadence, that is the case for CPT.
Hyper details checked against Repository and Latest release on 10 September 2026. Projects move; if something here is out of date or wrong, tell us and it gets fixed.