ShellRelay vs TermBridge
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
ShellRelay
Access and manage remote terminal sessions securely from your mobile device. Launch a personal server, connect to your own, and run commands with a touch-friendly interface. Share access with teammates and sign in easily without passwords.
- Remote terminal access
- Docker playground server
- Secure WebSocket relay
- Touch-friendly interface
- Team access sharing
- Passwordless sign-in
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ShellRelay — Terminal in Your Pocket ShellRelay lets you securely access and manage remote terminal sessions from your iPhone. Connect to any server, run commands, and stay productive — wherever you are. What you can do: - Launch a personal Docker-based playground server in seconds - Connect to your own servers via secure WebSocket relay - Run terminal sessions with a touch-friendly interface - Share server access with teammates using invite links - Sign in with Apple, Google or GitHub — no password required Pro Subscription: Upgrade to Pro to add more servers and unlock full access. Subscriptions are billed monthly through your Apple ID. Payment is charged at confirmation of purchase. Your subscription auto-renews unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Manage or cancel anytime in your iPhone Settings → Apple ID → Subscriptions. Privacy & Legal: - Privacy Policy: https://www.shellrelay.com/privacy - Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.shellrelay.com/terms
TermBridge
Control and observe any terminal on your Mac from your phone, anywhere. Dictate commands, attach files, and sync clipboards. Securely manage your development workflow remotely.
- Remote terminal control
- Live agent monitoring
- Push notifications for agent prompts
- Voice command dictation
- File and image attachment
- Two-way clipboard sync
- End-to-end encryption
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Control and observe any terminal on your Mac from your phone — from anywhere. TermBridge attaches at the shell layer, so it works across every terminal you already use: iTerm2, Terminal.app, the integrated terminals in VS Code, Zed, and Cursor, plus tmux. There's no new terminal app to live in and nothing to reconfigure. The exact shell you're already typing in simply shows up on your phone, live. VIBE CODING, UNTETHERED Start a long Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor agent run on your Mac, then walk away. TermBridge keeps you in the loop from wherever you are. • Watch any agent run live, character by character, exactly as it appears on your Mac. • Get a push notification the moment an agent is waiting on you — tap it to jump straight into that exact terminal, ready to answer. • See every agent running across all of your Macs in one place, with status at a glance: working, waiting, finished, or errored. • Step in and type when the agent asks a question, then step back out while it works. DO REAL WORK FROM YOUR PHONE TermBridge is built to get things done, not just watch. • Dictate commands and prompts by voice, with a live waveform so you know it's listening. • Attach a file or image from your phone. It uploads to your Mac and the path drops into the terminal, ready to run or hand to your agent. • Browse your Mac's files, and preview what the agent touched — Markdown and READMEs rendered, working-tree diffs, even a localhost dev server it just started. • Two-way clipboard sync: copy on your Mac, paste on your phone, and back. WHAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT Most remote-terminal apps only see sessions they created, on a server you SSH into. TermBridge is the opposite. • Attach to the terminals you're ALREADY in — not just sessions this app spawned. • See your editor's integrated terminals (VS Code, Zed, Cursor) on your phone. • Spawn a fresh shell on your Mac from your phone, on demand. • Mirror any window on your Mac, not just terminals — watch a build, a browser, or a design live. • Pair multiple devices (iPhone + iPad) to one Mac, and switch between Macs instantly — each keeps its own live connection, so an offline Mac never drops the one you're using. MADE YOURS • Themes and fonts to match your setup. • A custom on-screen key row and macros for the keys you actually use. • A full-color terminal with deep scrollback on iPhone, and a 3-panel layout on iPad. • A touch keyboard bar with Tab, Esc, Ctrl-C, arrows, and the modifiers a terminal needs. SECURE BY DESIGN Your terminal is sensitive. TermBridge treats it that way. • End-to-end encrypted with X25519 + AES-256-GCM — the relay only ever sees ciphertext. • Forward secrecy: fresh keys every session, so a future compromise can't unlock past ones. • Zero-knowledge relay — your secrets never touch a server, and no inbound port is opened on your Mac. • QR-code pairing, approved right on your Mac, with a fingerprint you can verify. RELIABLE • Reconnects the instant your network changes or your phone comes back online. • Sessions keep running when you step away — pick up exactly where you left off. • Missed output replays on attach, so you never lose what happened while you were gone. PERMISSIONS — ONLY WHEN YOU USE THE FEATURE • Notifications — to alert you when an agent on your Mac is waiting; tap to jump into that terminal. • Camera — to scan the QR code that pairs your phone with your Mac. • Microphone & Speech Recognition — only when you dictate by voice; transcription runs on-device. • Photos — only if you choose to attach an image to send to your Mac. • Local Network — to discover and connect to your Mac for the fastest, lowest-latency link. GETTING STARTED Install the free TermBridge menu-bar app on your Mac, scan the QR code once, approve on the Mac, and your terminals are with you everywhere. No SSH keys, no ports to forward, no servers to rent. Learn more at https://termbridge.clovinyx.io Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Screenshots
Verdict
ShellRelay and TermBridge are too close to call on the numbers: across 8 compared parameters — price, rating, ratings volume and ads among them — neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. ShellRelay sells 1 in-app purchase, starting at $4.99 per month and TermBridge sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $3.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for ShellRelay against 5.0 for TermBridge. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 1 respectively.
| Parameter | ShellRelay | TermBridge |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | — | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 1 |
| Update frequency | — | Every 10 days |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Freemium | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 16.4 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 5 MB | 56 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Licong Chen | Clovinyx |
Customer experience
ShellRelay
TermBridge
In-app purchases
ShellRelay
- ShellRelay Pro$4.991 Month
TermBridge
- TermBridge Pro$3.991 Month
- TermBridge Pro$29.991 Year
- TermBridge Pro Lifetime$79.99









