Comparison

dev vs Wake

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

Head to head
About

dev

Features
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Your agents keep working when you step away from the desk. dev-mux shows you what they're doing โ€” and lets you answer them from anywhere. dev-mux is a cockpit for the terminal sessions running on your own machines: AI coding agents, builds, test runners, deploys, service logs. It connects to a hub you run yourself, so your code and your machines stay yours. THE FLEET AT A GLANCE See every machine and every session in one view. Live status tells you what's running, what finished, and โ€” the one that matters โ€” what is sitting blocked waiting for you. ANSWER WITHOUT SITTING DOWN When an agent stops to ask "apply this patch?", dev-mux tells you. Approve or decline straight from the notification, or open the session and answer in full. The thing that used to cost you a round trip to the desk now costs a tap. VOICE, ON DEVICE Talk to a session instead of typing at it. Tap the Talk button, say what you want, watch the words appear as you speak, tap again, and dev-mux sends it. Recognition runs entirely on your iPhone using Apple's on-device speech engine โ€” your voice is never uploaded, not to dev-mux, not to your hub, not to anyone. The microphone can be opened between the tap that starts it and the tap that stops it. LIVE ACTIVITIES Pin a session to your Lock Screen and Dynamic Island. Watch a long build or a working agent without unlocking your phone. FILES Browse, read, and edit files on your machines. Fix the typo you spotted in the log without opening a laptop. A REAL TERMINAL WHEN YOU NEED ONE For the times a cockpit isn't enough, dev-mux includes a full terminal for the machines you already have access to โ€” proper PTY, real keyboard, host-key verification that refuses a changed key. BUILT TO BE YOURS * No account. No sign-up. No email address. You point the app at your hub and that's the whole setup. * No analytics, no trackers, no advertising, no third-party SDKs collecting anything. * Your credentials live in the iOS Keychain, on this device only. * Everything talks to your hub and nothing else. dev-mux requires a hub to connect to your own machines. Setup instructions at dev-mux.com.

About

Wake

Features
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Your sessions live on your own machine, inside tmux. Close Wake, lose signal, reboot the phone โ€” they keep running, and Wake reattaches exactly where they were. Built for the way people work with coding agents: several long-running sessions on a Mac or Linux box, checked on from a phone. THE DASHBOARD One row per session, with the state you actually want to know: producing output, quiet and probably waiting for you, or idle โ€” plus the last line each one printed. Tap to attach. A REAL TERMINAL, NOT A CHAT Full xterm emulation with one-finger scroll and native selection. Search inside the session. A snippet bar above the keyboard with {{placeholders}} you fill in as you insert. Paste without the system prompt. Nerd Font glyphs, so prompts and TUIs look right. Light and dark themes. On iPad, two sessions side by side. HISTORY THAT DOES NOT EVAPORATE Every byte your sessions print is appended to a log on your own server, then synced to the phone and indexed. Search across sessions and across days, read it on the train with no connection, export a whole transcript to a file. Nothing is lost to a scrollback limit โ€” and the list of what you were doing, and where, outlives the machine that ran it. PROJECTS, NOT CONNECTIONS Every git repo under the folders you choose, with dirty and unpushed badges so you can see where the work is. Launch templates turn one tap into the right command in the right directory. Browse files over SFTP with Quick Look, upload, rename, make folders. Read git status, log and diff; commit and push. WAKE THE MACHINE Your Mac is allowed to sleep. Tap the server and Wake sends a magic packet through another machine on that network, waits for SSH to answer, and puts you back into your sessions. WHAT IT NEEDS ON THE SERVER sshd, tmux 3.3 or newer, and git. Nothing else. No agent to install, no daemon, no account, no cloud service in the middle. A guided preflight checks every requirement and shows you the exact command to paste for anything missing. KEYS AND ACCESS Import an existing private key in any container: OpenSSH (encrypted too), PKCS#8, PEM, PuTTY .ppk. Ed25519 and ECDSA P-256/384/521 โ€” RSA is not supported, generate an Ed25519 key instead. Keys live in the Keychain, host keys are pinned on first connection and a change blocks the connection. Face ID can lock the whole app. WAKE PRO Wake is free with one server and two live sessions, and every reading feature โ€” history, search, export โ€” is included. Wake Pro โ€” monthly, yearly, or a one-time lifetime purchase โ€” unlocks unlimited servers and sessions. Subscriptions renew automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period; payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase, and you can manage or cancel it in your App Store account settings. Nothing you created is ever taken away: if a subscription lapses, extra servers stay in the list and existing sessions remain attachable. PRIVACY No account, no telemetry, no tracking. Your logs stay on your server and on your phone, kept out of iCloud backup. Known secrets โ€” API tokens, private keys โ€” are masked in the search index. Retention is yours to set, on both sides. FROM ANYWHERE, NO OPEN PORTS Wake talks plain SSH, directly or through a Cloudflare Tunnel: pick "Cloudflare Tunnel", type your tunnel's hostname, and Wake opens the same connection cloudflared would โ€” nothing to install on the phone, no port open on your router, service tokens supported for hostnames behind Cloudflare Access. WireGuard and Tailscale work too. Nothing is relayed through us, because there is no us in the path. Wake is not affiliated with or endorsed by any coding agent or service; their names are used only to describe what runs inside your terminal sessions. LEGAL Privacy Policy: https://marcotini.com/privacy-policy Terms of Use (EULA): https://marcotini.com/eula

Screenshots

dev4 screens
Wake4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: dev at none against Wake's 3. Wake's advantage is update cadence (every 11 days vs every 2 months). 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. Wake sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $0.99 per month. dev asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

dev ships an update every 2 months, Wake every 11 days. Both last shipped on November 10, 2026.

Scorecard2 real differences ยท 4 level
dev versus Wake: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterdevWake
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 2 monthsEvery 11 days โ€” better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo โ€” betterYes
DevicesiPhoneiPhone, iPad โ€” better
Requires iOS16.2 โ€” better17.0
Further details โ€” not scored
Size4 MB24 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperJamie Ter BeestMarco Tini

In-app purchases

None

dev

No in-app purchases

3 purchases

Wake

Subscriptions2
  • Wake Pro Monthly$0.991 Month
  • Wake Pro Yearly$8.991 Year
One-time1
  • Wake Pro Lifetime$29.99

Questions

Is dev free?
dev is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Wake free?
Wake is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do dev or Wake have ads?
Neither dev nor Wake shows ads.
Which is updated more often, dev or Wake?
dev ships an update every 2 months, and Wake every 11 days. Most recently, dev was updated on November 10, 2026 and Wake on November 10, 2026.

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