MuffinTerm vs Breadbin
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
MuffinTerm
Relive the classic BBS experience with a modern terminal emulator. Connect to telnet-enabled BBSes worldwide and enjoy pixel-accurate retro display modes and aesthetic effects like simulated modem speed and CRT curvature. Upload and download files with classic protocols.
- Telnet BBS connection
- Authentic retro display modes (CP437, PETSCII, ATASCII)
- Simulated modem speed
- CRT curvature and scanlines
- File transfer (XMODEM, YMODEM, ZMODEM)
- Digital sticky notes for BBSes
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MuffinTerm: A terminal crafted for the classic BBS experience. Dive back into the glory days of dial-up bulletin board systems… just, without the dialing up. (Though we’ll always miss that modem sound.) BBSes were once the way that almost anyone “online” got online. The modern Internet might have stolen a bit of the spotlight, but BBSes are still around if you know where to look—and MuffinTerm can take you there. Connect to telnet-enabled BBSes from around the world, with a terminal that’s designed to bring the classic experience to devices of today. (And no more busy signals!) Select from among text modes and terminal hardware of the DOS and home computer era, with pixel-accurate CP437, PETSCII, and ATASCII support for the popular systems of the day, reproduced in exacting detail to help you really feel at home. (All rendered with a custom Metal shader—it is the 21st century, after all.) • MDA with white (P4), green (P31), or amber (P3) phosphor • CGA in 40- or 80-column mode • EGA in 25- or 43-line mode • VGA in 25- or 50-line mode • VIC-II (C64/PETSCII) in NTSC, PAL, or borderless mode • ANTIC (ATASCII) in NTSC, PAL, or borderless mode Fuel your nostalgia further by enabling various aesthetic effects: • Simulated modem speed — from the 110cps teletype crawl of the 1970s to the “blazing fast” 56K of the awesome ’90s. Slow down that ANSI animation to look the way it was originally intended, or just relive the feel of watching the bytes roll in. (Fortunately, without the cross-town toll charges this time around.) • CRT curvature — Turn your flat-screen device into the spitting image of a classic ’tube. • Scan lines — Reject the modernity of your perfect high-DPI display and embrace the scanlines that once reigned supreme. • Warm tube tint — Harken back to an era of dubiously calibrated picture tubes and iffy RF adapters. • VIC-II luma bars — Relive the experience of poorly isolated clock lines (and the resulting visual artifacting). • Overscan borders — View the terminal as it would appear on a typical TV, or flout the factory calibration and show the full borders of the display field. • Select a custom app icon from among several inspired by modems of the BBS era (plus a couple of floppy disks). Some features are functional as well as fun. For example, who hasn’t stuck a sticky note or two to the side of their monitor at some point? Fortunately, the digital era is no bar to this ancient practice. Each BBS in your dialing directory gets its own digital sticky note (pick a color!), plus another that’s shared between them all. Record notes, make reminders, or be naughty and jot down a password or two. (We won’t peek.) Of course, the basics are still all there. Traditional ANSI, PETSCII, and ATASCII terminal emulation give you the proper BBS experience; teletype (TTY) and “raw mode” provide support for special-use systems. Upload and download files using the standard XMODEM, YMODEM, and ZMODEM protocols. Save transcripts of your calls as text or raw data logs. There’s even a session timer in the status line to show you how long you’ve been connected. (Not responsible for flashbacks to long-distance bills from the 1980s.) A comprehensive dialing directory helps you to keep track of your favorite systems. You can also import up-to-date BBS lists from popular online BBS directories. Have multiple devices? Automatically sync your dialing directory and call history between them all—whether iOS, iPadOS, and macOS—via iCloud. And last but not least, it’s free. No ads, no in-app purchases, no weird tracking shenanigans. It’s just you and the soft glow of the pixels calling out to you. It’s time to get back online with MuffinTerm.
Breadbin
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Breadbin is a Commodore 64 emulator for iPhone, iPad and Mac — written from scratch in Swift, every chip built from the original hardware documentation. Not a port, and not a wrapper around somebody else's emulator, original code from the first cycle to the last. YOU BRING THE ROMS Breadbin ships clean — no ROM images and no games, because they are not ours to give away. On first launch the app lists the three system files the machine needs (KERNAL, BASIC, character generator), shows which ones it has found, and imports them with a tap from the Files app. Dump them from hardware you own, or use freely licensed replacement ROMs — either way you are a minute from a READY prompt. Your files stay on your device. ACCURACY YOU CAN CHECK • Cycle-accurate 6510 processor — undocumented opcodes, NMOS decimal mode, per-cycle bus behaviour. Passes Klaus Dormann's 6502 functional test suite, the standard the emulator community measures against. • Cycle-based VIC-II video — bad lines, sprite DMA, the border unit, all eight graphics modes, raster interrupts. Raster-timing demos behave the way they should. • A real 1541 drive — its own processor, its own VIA chips, a rotating GCR bitstream with byte-ready wired exactly as the hardware does it. Fastloaders and copy-protected disks work here instead of hanging. • Both SID sound revisions, 6581 and 8580, built from the datasheet — including the mixer quirk that makes 4-bit sample playback audible on the 6581. DIAL A BULLETIN BOARD Breadbin carries an emulated SwiftLink modem bridged to the internet. Run a terminal program, pick a board from your phone book, and you are logged into a live BBS over TCP — telnet negotiation handled for you, PETSCII intact. The boards are still out there, and still busy. Your phone book is a plain text file you edit yourself. BUILT FOR THE DEVICE IN YOUR HAND • A touch keyboard laid out like the real machine, with national keycaps for Sweden/Finland, Denmark/Norway and Germany • On-screen joystick — analog stick or D-pad, placed where your thumb actually is, with autofire • 1351 proportional mouse — a trackpad on touch screens, a captured pointer on the Mac • Save states with thumbnails, so you can put the machine down mid-level • Display filters from razor-sharp pixels to a softened CRT look, with an adjustable border • Instant loading when you want it, true drive speed when the software demands it • Loads .prg, .d64, .g64, .t64, .p00 and .crt cartridge files • One purchase covers iPhone, iPad and Mac PAY ONCE, PLAY FOREVER No ads. No subscriptions. No in-app purchases. No account. And no data collection: no analytics, no tracking — nothing is collected, so there is nothing to sell, share or leak. The only network traffic Breadbin ever makes is the bulletin board you tell it to dial. Breadbin is not affiliated with, authorised by, or endorsed by the owners of the Commodore or Commodore 64 trademarks. It ships no Commodore software.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: MuffinTerm at Free against Breadbin's $4.99. MuffinTerm also leads on iOS requirement (14.0 vs 16.0). On update cadence, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
MuffinTerm is free to download; Breadbin costs $4.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 5, 2026 and October 7, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | MuffinTerm | Breadbin |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $4.99 |
| Rating | 4.9 (38 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 93.3% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 38 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 3 weeks | Every 3 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac — better | iPhone, iPad, Mac |
| Requires iOS | 14.0 — better | 16.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 3 MB | 2 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Molly Black | LASZLO DOBROVOLSZKI |
In-app purchases
MuffinTerm
No in-app purchases
Breadbin
No in-app purchases









