If you've ever SSH'd into a server and typed top out of habit, you already know the itch these tools scratch: a clean, live view of what's eating your CPU, memory, disk and network, right there in the terminal, without installing a monitoring agent or opening a browser tab. btop and bottom are the two most popular modern replacements for the classic htop — both free, both open source, both actively maintained — but they're built by different people with different priorities, and picking the wrong one means either fighting a compiler or missing a feature you actually wanted.
What they have in common
Both tools are completely free (Apache 2.0 for btop, MIT for bottom), cross-platform, and designed as drop-in visual upgrades over htop: live graphs instead of a static number, sortable and searchable process lists, and no external dependencies once installed. Neither has a paid tier, a cloud dashboard, or a business model beyond GitHub stars — you install a binary and that's the whole product.
btop — the feature-rich, mouse-friendly option
btop is written in C++ and leans into a modern terminal UI: full mouse support (click to sort, click to kill a process), built-in GPU monitoring for NVIDIA, AMD and Intel, battery stats, and a deep library of visual themes and presets. It has more GitHub stars (34,200+) and a more active community than bottom, and its process view is the most detailed of the two.
Who it's for: sysadmins and DevOps engineers who want the most detailed single-machine view and don't mind a heavier tool.
Honest limits: you need a recent compiler (GCC 14+ or Clang 19+) to build it from source, GPU monitoring needs vendor-specific libraries installed separately, and the sheer number of options gives it a steeper learning curve than a bare-bones monitor.
bottom — the leaner, more portable option
bottom is written in Rust and is more conservative in scope: solid CPU/memory/network/temperature graphs, a searchable and sortable process list with a tree view, and consistently native behavior across Linux, macOS and Windows. It has fewer stars (13,900+) but a genuinely active release cadence, and its Rust toolchain tends to be an easier build dependency to satisfy than btop's C++ requirements on older systems.
Who it's for: developers who want a fast, portable monitor across mixed OS fleets without GPU/battery extras they won't use.
Honest limits: it's terminal-only with no GUI mode, needs Rust to compile from source (though precompiled binaries are available), and its customization options — while real — are shallower than btop's theme system.
Side by side
| btop | bottom | |
|---|---|---|
| Language | C++ | Rust |
| License | Apache 2.0 | MIT |
| Mouse support | Yes | No |
| GPU monitoring | Yes (NVIDIA/AMD/Intel) | No |
| Battery stats | Yes | No |
| Process tree view | Yes | Yes |
| GitHub stars | 34,200+ | 13,900+ |
| Build dependency | GCC 14+ / Clang 19+ | Rust toolchain (or precompiled binary) |
Verdict
Pick btop if you're on one machine (or a small fleet) you actually sit in front of a lot, want GPU and battery monitoring, and like clicking things with a mouse instead of memorizing keybindings.
Pick bottom if you manage a mix of Linux, macOS and Windows boxes, want a lighter and more predictable footprint, and don't need GPU monitoring.
Both are strict upgrades over plain htop for anyone who lives in a terminal — the honest answer is that you can install both in under a minute and just see which one your hands prefer. Neither will cost you anything but disk space.