Prompt 3 vs gterm
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Prompt 3
A fully-native terminal emulator for Apple devices, offering robust connectivity for SSH, Mosh, and more. It features fast emulation, customizable clips, secure authentication, and cross-device syncing for a seamless experience.
- Native terminal emulator
- SSH, Mosh, Eternal Terminal, Telnet support
- Panic Sync for cross-device server syncing
- Superfast emulation with GPU acceleration
- Customizable clips for commands
- FaceID/TouchID authentication
- Jump Hosts and Agent Forwarding
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Prompt 3 is our #1 fully-native terminal emulator for Mac, iPhone, iPad, and now, Apple Vision Pro! Yes, with one purchase, you get four platforms. Supporting SSH, Mosh, Eternal Terminal, Telnet, and Local Shells (on Mac), you can stay connected even on the most unstable networks. And with Panic Sync, your servers sync everywhere. For terminals, this is the only app you need. NOW EVEN BETTER: • SSH, Telnet, and Local (for Mac) Rock-solid and reliable connectivity to your hosts. • Mosh and Eternal Terminal Keep your terminal open even when you get disconnected. Mosh is optimized for high-latency, low-throughput networks. Eternal Terminal is great for when you need to keep your full terminal history on a flaky connection. • Lower Price Everything is so expensive right now. So we made Prompt cheaper. Take that, capitalism. • Superfast Emulation We retooled the text engine in Prompt 3 to be up to 10x faster, including GPU acceleration, and with improved terminal emulation, you can run nvim inside tmux without breaking a sweat. • Clips Put your most-used commands and text bits into clips and access them with a single tap via Prompt’s keyboard bar. Clips can be stored globally or per-server. • Secure Enclave Authenticate with FaceID and TouchID. The keys will stay secure on your device. • Panic Sync Sync your favorite servers, passwords, private keys, and clips, between Prompt on all of your devices. • Customizable Make Prompt perfect with new themes, fonts, and a very configurable iOS keyboard. • Jump Hosts and Agent Forwarding Access corporate servers, even at the beach. • Mouse Support Use your mouse to interact with TUI-based apps that run through the terminal. AND YES, A DARK ICON. What more can we say? TAKE CONTROL FROM ANYWHERE, INCLUDING YOUR MAC AND APPLE VISION PRO. WE HOPE YOU ENJOY PROMPT 3. © Panic EULA: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
gterm
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gterm is a real terminal for iOS. It renders with Ghostty's GPU engine for true xterm/VT emulation, connects straight to your servers over SSH, keeps your keys on device, and ships an AI command assistant that writes the commands for you. It's the same renderer and VT parser as the Ghostty desktop app. iOS can't fork/exec a local shell, so gterm drives the terminal straight from the SSH stream through a custom passthru IO backend added to libghostty — giving you a real terminal in a sandboxed iOS surface. GPU-RENDERED TERMINAL Real xterm/VT emulation via Ghostty's libghostty, drawn on Metal. Colors, ligatures, and reflow that feel native — not a web shim. SSH-NATIVE Connects with swift-nio-ssh — password and public-key auth, a PTY shell, live window resizing, and trust-on-first-use host-key verification. KEYS STAY ON DEVICE Import Ed25519 / ECDSA private keys into the iOS Keychain — device-only, never synced. Pick one or more keys to try per host. SHELL-GRADE KEYBOARD A custom accessory keyboard with the keys iOS forgets — Esc, Ctrl, Alt, Tab, arrows, and sticky modifiers for real TUI navigation. AI COMMAND ASSISTANT Describe what you want in plain English. The AI reads your recent commands and visible screen, proposes a command, and shows it to you for review before it runs. AI AUTO-COMPLETION As you type, suggestions surface above the keyboard — from your history and from your provider. Bring your own key; it's stored masked in the Keychain. Open source: https://github.com/madeye/gterm
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Prompt 3 at Free against gterm's $1.99. Prompt 3 also leads on device support (4 vs 2). gterm's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 2) and update cadence (every 3 weeks vs every 6 weeks). On ads, chart position and iOS requirement 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
Prompt 3 is free to download; gterm costs $1.99 up front. Prompt 3 sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per year. gterm asks for nothing beyond the download.
Prompt 3 ships an update every 6 weeks, gterm every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 27, 2026 and September 14, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Prompt 3 | gterm |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $1.99 |
| Rating | 4.3 (349 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 22.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 349 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 6 weeks | Every 3 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Paid | — |
| Best chart rank | #28 | #18 — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac, Vision Pro — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 43 MB | 48 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Panic, Inc. | Shanghai Tangzixiang Information Technology Co., Ltd |
Bugs and requests
Prompt 3
Reported bugs
5 issues- Server list randomly disappears with Panic Sync
- Crashes when connected to external monitor
- Black screen issues with custom font configurations
- Sync issues causing data loss
- Vertical display sync issues
Requested features
8 requests- Shortcuts support on macOS
- Ability to click and select within commands
- Local shell option
- Run clips on server connection
- Export/backup clips
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- Alt/Meta key support for Emacs
- iCloud sync option
- Sign in with Apple for Panic Sync
gterm
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Prompt 3
- Prompt 3 iOS + Mac (Annual)7 Days trial$9.991 Year
- Prompt 3 One Time$49.99
gterm
No in-app purchases









