Comparison

PureTerm vs BentoTerm

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

Head to head
About

PureTerm

Features
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PureTerm is a real terminal for your iPhone and iPad: connect to your own servers over SSH or Telnet and work as if you were sitting at the console. FREE TRIAL: try the yearly plan free for 3 days. After the trial it renews at the yearly price unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the trial ends. Manage or cancel anytime in your Apple ID settings. A REAL TERMINAL Full PTY with xterm-256color emulation. vim, htop, nano, colors, mouse modes and live window resizing behave the way they should โ€” this is not a fake command box. SSH DONE RIGHT - Log in with a password or an SSH key - Generate modern ed25519 keys directly on your device (Pro) - Import existing OpenSSH private keys โ€” ed25519 or RSA, passphrase supported (Pro) - Passwords and private keys are stored in the iOS Keychain, on this device only TELNET TOO Network gear, retro machines, BBS and MUD servers: plain Telnet is one tap away, with correct option negotiation and window-size support. YOUR CREDENTIALS STAY YOURS PureTerm has no account, no sign-up, no analytics and no servers of its own. The app connects only to the hosts you add yourself. Nothing about you or your servers is uploaded anywhere. SAVED HOSTS Keep each machine as a profile โ€” name, address, port, username, auth method โ€” and connect with a tap. FREE AND PRO Free: 1 saved host and sessions up to 60 seconds โ€” enough to check a service or fix a config line. PureTerm Pro unlocks unlimited hosts, unlimited session length and SSH key management, from $0.99/month (yearly and lifetime options available). WHO IT'S FOR - Developers and sysadmins who need a quick shell from anywhere - Homelab owners with a Raspberry Pi or NAS in the closet - Anyone who loves a proper terminal โ€” including the retro Telnet corners of the internet No ads, no tracking, no dark patterns. Just a clean, fast terminal in your pocket. Note: features listed under PRO require a separate purchase โ€” an auto-renewable subscription (monthly or yearly) or a one-time Lifetime unlock. โ€”โ€”โ€” Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://hdappstudio.com/pureterm/privacy/

About

BentoTerm

Features
Read full description

Your agents run for forty minutes at a time. Watching one is a waste of you โ€” so you run several, and the problem becomes keeping track of them all. Bento Term is a terminal built for exactly that. A WHOLE TEAM, ONE SCREEN Every agent gets a pane, tinted by what it's doing: blue is working, amber is waiting for you, green is done and you haven't looked yet. You read the room instead of visiting each one. Parallel mode tiles everything; Focus mode gives one pane the whole screen with the rest in a sidebar. SAY IT, DON'T TYPE IT Hold on a pane and talk. Speaking is about three times faster than typing, and Bento reads the screen, so file names and technical words come out right โ€” mixed Chinese/English included. Slide up to send, down to cancel. LEAVE THE DESK, NOT THE WORK Everything runs in tmux on your machine โ€” your Mac, a Linux server, or WSL โ€” over plain SSH, with nothing installed on the other end. Quit the app, close the laptop: nothing stops. Attach from iPhone or iPad mid-run and answer from wherever you are. EVERY DAY - The file tree of every pane's working directory. Tap a printed path and it opens with syntax highlighting, even at :42. PDFs and images too. - Panes move like windows: split, drag, drop โ€” every move is a real tmux move. - Pick a folder, pick an agent, and Bento opens the panes and starts them. No shell needed. - Ten agents recognized out of the box โ€” Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI and more โ€” every profile editable, so a tool nobody has heard of yet is one profile away. BUILT LIKE A TERMINAL Native Swift, the same GPU renderer as Ghostty (libghostty), real tmux control mode (-CC). No accounts. Your terminal output never leaves your machines. Free and open source, Apache-2.0. Requires a machine you can ssh into with tmux installed. macOS, Linux and WSL all work.

Screenshots

PureTerm4 screens
BentoTerm4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: BentoTerm at none against PureTerm's 3. 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. PureTerm sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $0.99 per month. BentoTerm asks for nothing beyond the download.

Scorecard1 real difference ยท 5 level
PureTerm versus BentoTerm: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPureTermBentoTerm
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 2 monthsโ€”
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo โ€” better
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS17.017.0
Further details โ€” not scored
Size18 MB42 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperHD YAPIMCILIK VE TEKNOLOJI ITHALAT IHRACAT TICARET LIMITED SIRKETIChi On Ho

In-app purchases

3 purchases

PureTerm

Subscriptions2
  • PureTerm Pro โ€” Monthly$0.991 Month
  • PureTerm Pro โ€” Yearly$5.991 Year
One-time1
  • PureTerm Pro โ€” Lifetime$14.99
None

BentoTerm

No in-app purchases

Questions

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

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