Comparison

Exec Terminal vs ShellDiver

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side โ€” with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Exec Terminal

Read full description

Exec Terminal is a terminal workspace for iPhone and iPad, built for developers, operators, and anyone who needs secure command-line access on the go. TERMINAL FEATURES โ€” FREE โ€ข Connect to your servers with SSH or Mosh โ€ข Run a local shell on your device โ€ข Save connections and command snippets โ€ข Restore terminal sessions and work across multiple servers โ€ข Protect access with Face ID or Touch ID โ€ข Keep SSH credentials in the iOS Keychain Terminal features remain free and do not require an account or subscription. AI THAT FITS YOUR WORKFLOW Use local AI with supported Apple Intelligence devices, an on-device model, or your own Ollama endpoint. Local AI options do not use Exec Cloud and do not require an Exec Terminal Pro subscription. For cloud assistance, choose Exec Cloud: โ€ข Sign in with Apple without sharing your name or email with Exec Terminal โ€ข Start with a limited free allowance โ€ข Ask for concise command-line help โ€ข Optionally include a bounded, redacted portion of terminal context โ€ข Use Agent mode to work through multi-step terminal tasks with local tool execution and dangerous-command confirmation EXEC TERMINAL PRO Exec Terminal Pro is an auto-renewable monthly or annual subscription that raises the fair-use limits for Exec Cloud AI and Agent features. Current prices and subscription periods are shown in the App before purchase. Pro is optional; SSH, Mosh, the local terminal, and local AI remain available without it. Payment is charged to your Apple ID at confirmation. Subscriptions renew automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. You can restore purchases or open Manage Subscription from the App. PRIVACY BY DESIGN Terminal context sharing is off by default. Exec Cloud prompts and responses are processed in real time and are not stored in the gateway database. The App does not use advertising or cross-app tracking. Privacy Policy: https://execterminal.com/privacy/ Terms of Use: https://execterminal.com/terms/ Support: https://execterminal.com/support/

About

ShellDiver

Read full description

With software, free is usually a question rather than an answer. Here it is arithmetic: no server of ours, no accounts, no analytics โ€” nothing for a subscription to pay for. Sync, startup commands, port forwarding: all of it is in the app. WHERE YOUR KEYS LIVE In your device's keychain. ShellDiver has no account and no sign-in โ€” there is simply nowhere on our side for anything of yours to sit. An Ed25519 key either travels with you through iCloud Keychain, end-to-end encrypted, or stays on this device behind Face ID. A Secure Enclave key is created inside the security chip. It cannot be read out โ€” not even by ShellDiver โ€” never leaves the device, and will ask for Face ID on every sign-in if you want it to. THE VAULT Instead of iCloud you can take syncing into your own hands: an encrypted file in a place you choose. A USB stick, a cloud folder, or your own WebDAV server, so Nextcloud, ownCloud, a Synology, an Apache with mod_dav. It works across different Apple IDs and carries the secrets with it: saved server passwords and private keys. Only your devices encrypt and decrypt. Whoever runs the storage location sees nothing but unreadable files. You add a second device with a QR code, without typing your passphrase there. THE TERMINAL It does not hang up because you looked somewhere else for a minute: the connection belongs to the session, not to the screen. The running build and the half-typed line are still there when you come back. Up to 20 sessions as tabs, terminals and files mixed. Real xterm emulation: colour, UTF-8, resizing that works โ€” htop, vim and colourful logs look the way you expect. Plus search through the scrollback, your choice of monospaced font including Nerd Fonts, and five colour schemes. On iPhone there is a row above the keyboard with esc, ctrl, tab, arrows and a paste key, because a phone has no โŒ˜V. When the link drops, ShellDiver notices through keepalives and rebuilds it by itself. This is SSH, not Mosh: the new shell starts fresh. SIGNING IN WITHOUT GUESSING ShellDiver asks the server which methods it offers and works through whatever it holds credentials for. That covers publickey followed by keyboard-interactive โ€” 2FA after the key โ€” and equally a server that only offers keyboard-interactive while the host is saved as "password". One-time codes are never pre-filled and never stored. You confirm a host key once, by its fingerprint. Every connection after that checks it, and a key that has changed is refused rather than waved through. THROUGH A JUMP HOST When a server is only open on the inside, you give it a jump host โ€” OpenSSH's ProxyJump. The jump host then forwards nothing but encrypted bytes and cannot read along; both sign-ins are signed on this device. So your key does not have to sit on the machine in between, and a Secure Enclave key works here too. FILES AND TUNNELS The SFTP browser downloads and uploads, whole folders included, renames, and deletes recursively. Local port forwarding brings a database or an admin interface onto this device. It listens on 127.0.0.1 only and cannot be reached from outside; each rule holds its own connection, so a tunnel does not fall with a terminal. WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE Your ~/.ssh/config is imported, with each IdentityFile matched against the keys you have and any ProxyJump resolved; so is known_hosts, hashed entries as far as they can be matched. Keys come in as Ed25519, RSA or ECDSA โ€” from the OpenSSH container, from PuTTY's .ppk (v2 and v3), and from the PEM family. A passphrase on the file is used once during import and not kept. Snippets are also the buttons above the keyboard โ€” global or bound to one host, with a confirmation step if you want one. One per host runs by itself as soon as the shell is open. The backup is a JSON file you can read โ€” secrets sit inside an encrypted block under a passphrase you choose. Without it nobody gets at them, us included.

Screenshots

Exec Terminal4 screens
ShellDiver4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: ShellDiver at none against Exec Terminal's 2. On price, ads, device support and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price ยท Rating ยท Positive reviews ยท Number of ratings ยท Update frequency ยท Ads ยท In-app purchases ยท Monetization ยท Best chart rank ยท Devices ยท Requires iOS

CostPrice ยท In-app purchases ยท Ads ยท Monetization

Both are free to download. Exec Terminal sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per month. ShellDiver asks for nothing beyond the download.

Scorecard1 real difference ยท 5 level
Exec Terminal versus ShellDiver: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterExec TerminalShellDiver
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyโ€”Weekly
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo โ€” better
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad, Mac โ€” better
Requires iOS18.618.0 โ€” better
Further details โ€” not scored
Size24 MB11 MB
Age rating4+12+
DeveloperIlia KhabadaevMathias Oysmueller

In-app purchases

2 purchases

Exec Terminal

Subscriptions2
  • Exec Terminal Pro Monthly$9.991 Month
  • Exec Terminal Pro Annual$69.991 Year
None

ShellDiver

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Exec Terminal free?
Exec Terminal is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is ShellDiver free?
ShellDiver is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Exec Terminal or ShellDiver have ads?
Neither Exec Terminal nor ShellDiver shows ads.

Other comparisons