TerminalX vs Termius: one-time price vs subscription

The short version

Choose TerminalX if you want to pay once, keep your credentials on your own machine, work offline, and cover macOS, Windows and Linux from a single license. Choose Termius if you need cross-device sync, a mobile app, or team features, and you are happy to pay a recurring fee for them.

Neither is the right answer for everyone. The rest of this page explains the trade-offs behind that summary.

Row by row

Termius features and prices change; confirm the current line-up on termius.com.

Price model

This is the clearest difference. TerminalX is bought once. Launch pricing runs in phases counted from paid orders only: $9 for the first 500 licenses, $19 for the next 250, then $29 standard. Whichever phase you buy in, you keep the app for life, and updates are included.

Termius uses a subscription, with a free tier and paid plans that unlock more. Over several years a subscription can cost several times a one-time price. That is not automatically bad — you are paying for ongoing sync and team infrastructure — but it is the first thing to decide about. If you only need a client on your own machines, the recurring fee is harder to justify.

Account and vault

Termius is built around an account. Signing in is what makes sync possible, and it is why your vault can follow you to another device or a phone. The trade-off is that a copy of your data lives on the vendor's servers.

TerminalX has no account and no server. Your hosts, keys, snippets and forwarding rules sit in a local vault encrypted with a key derived through Argon2id and protected with XChaCha20-Poly1305. Your master password is never stored or transmitted, and the app has no telemetry. The cost of that model is that there is no sync — your data lives on the machine you put it on.

Offline use and runtime

TerminalX runs fully offline after the initial download. Reaching your servers needs your network, not ours. It is also built on Tauri rather than Electron: it uses the operating system's native webview instead of bundling Chromium, which makes for a smaller download and lower idle memory.

Termius ships desktop and mobile apps. If you want to start a session on your phone, that reach is a real advantage, and no desktop-only tool replicates it. The relevant question is whether you actually use mobile access; if not, you are paying for it either way.

Protocols and daily workflow

TerminalX covers SSH with password, key, certificate and agent authentication, jump hosts, agent forwarding and port knocking. Alongside it: dual-pane SFTP, Telnet, Serial with a USB port picker, and Mosh. Port forwarding supports local, remote and dynamic SOCKS5 rules with auto-start.

Termius also handles SSH and SFTP well, and adds its own set of connection types. If you manage network switches or embedded boards, confirm Serial support on whichever client you choose before you buy.

• Tabs, split panes and search-in-scrollback
• History autocomplete and a command palette
• Hosts with nested groups, tags and group defaults
• A keychain that generates and imports Ed25519, RSA and ECDSA keys

Migrating from Termius

If you move to TerminalX, an import wizard reads a Termius export or backup and maps hosts, groups, keys and snippets into the app. It takes a couple of clicks after you export your data from Termius.

One honest caveat: Termius does not publish its export format, so the importer is best-effort against a reverse-engineered layout. It may miss fields, and the format can change. Verify every imported host and key before you rely on it, and keep your Termius export until you are sure.

When Termius is the better pick

• You need sync across devicesa laptop, a desktop and a phone kept in step is something local-first tools do not do
• You want a mobile appTerminalX is desktop only, by design
• Your team shares credentialsTermius is built for that; TerminalX team vaults are not shipped yet
• You prefer to rent and never think about ita subscription bundles hosting and updates into one predictable bill

TerminalX lists what it has not shipped — sync, team vaults, collaboration, audit logs and managed AI — openly, so you can rule it in or out quickly.