Compare
Termuna vs Tabby.
Tabby is a hackable, open source terminal that does almost everything, and says on its own README that it is not lightweight. Termuna covers the same ground, tabs, splits, an encrypted SSH vault, SFTP, without a browser engine in the window, and adds the one thing Tabby does not try: a session that does not end.
The short answer
Stay with Tabby if you want a plugin rich terminal on all three desktops, you use its Telnet, serial or Zmodem sides, and the memory does not bother you. Switch to Termuna if you want the same everyday features in a native app, and a session that keeps running when the lid closes and continues on the web or your phone with the same scrollback.
1. The runtime
Tabby is an Electron app: every window carries a browser engine. Termuna is native, GPU rendered, and holds itself to under 100 MB with three tabs open and under 300 ms from launch to a usable prompt, measured on every build (how we measure). We have not measured Tabby, so we quote no number for it; the shape of the difference is a browser runtime against none.
2. A session, not a window
Tabby restores tabs on start and reconnects SSH, which reopens the tabs; the shells that were in them ended with the window. Termuna's daemon owns the shells, so they run on when the window closes, survive a reboot with the whole workspace, and show up live on the web or the phone (how). Tabby has no mobile client; Tabby Web is a browser build you host yourself, with connections of its own.
3. Plugins against built in
Tabby's plugin system is how it does so much, and it is also where the weight comes from. Termuna has no plugin system on purpose: the things people install plugins for most often, SSH with a vault, SFTP, quake mode, snippets, command history, are core features, and the list of what we do not do is short and honest below.
| What you need | Termuna | Tabby |
|---|---|---|
| Session survives a closed lid | Yes, the daemon owns the shells, and a dropped SSH link redials into the same pane (the rule) | No. Restoring tabs reopens the tabs and reconnects SSH |
| Same live session on the phone | Yes, same scrollback, same cursor | No mobile client. Tabby Web is a self-hosted browser build |
| Use the terminal with no account | Yes, forever | Yes |
| Runtime | Native, GPU rendered, plus a local daemon | Electron |
| Plugins | No plugin system | Yes, an in-app plugin manager and a large catalogue |
| Can the vendor read your scrollback | No, the relay holds ciphertext only | No cloud mirror. Config sync only if you set up a server |
| Leaving with your data | One JSON archive, documented, every plan | One YAML config file on disk |
| Price | Terminal free forever. Cloud continuity from $6 a month | Free, open source |
| Tabby facts checked on 6 September 2026 against the pages linked above. Memory and start time are not measured by us for Tabby, so no number of theirs is in this table. The full five-way matrix is on /compare. | ||
Pick Tabby if
- You need Telnet, a serial console or Zmodem transfers. Termuna speaks SSH and SFTP and nothing else; a network engineer on a console cable is Tabby's user, not ours.
- Plugins are how you work: a theme, a status bar widget, a workflow helper someone already wrote for the thing you do. There is no plugin to install in Termuna and no API to write one against.
- You want a portable build that runs from a USB stick on a machine you do not administer. Termuna installs, and its daemon expects to stay.
- You want open source, fully, today. Tabby is MIT licensed with years of community behind it; Termuna is not open source.
- Only Tabby Web will do: a terminal in a browser tab on a server you run yourself, with no vendor in the picture. Our web viewer shows a session that runs on your machine through our relay, which is a different thing.
Coming over
Tabby keeps its SSH profiles in its own YAML config file, not in
~/.ssh/config, and Termuna imports only the latter. So the
honest step has two halves. Hosts you already reach with plain
ssh are in ~/.ssh/config today: in Termuna
press Ctrl+K, type ssh config and choose
Link ~/.ssh/config, and every plain Host
block (HostName, User, Port, IdentityFile, ProxyJump) becomes a host in
your encrypted vault, with the link kept for re-reads. Profiles that
exist only in Tabby you either write into ~/.ssh/config
first and re-read, or add in Termuna's
host form with the same jump
hosts and port forwards. Saved passwords do not migrate: enter them again on the host form,
where they are sealed in the vault with everything else. Both terminals can stay installed while you decide; neither
changes the other's files.