Spare vs htop and btop
Every process, or the work behind them.
htop and btop are excellent terminal process viewers, and both install on a Mac with Homebrew. Spare lives in your menu bar and groups the same activity into apps, projects, and AI agents, so you can see which piece of work is busy.
Free. No subscription. No account. Apple silicon · macOS 14+.
Which one fits?
Use htop or btop when you want per-process detail, fast sorting and filtering, a process tree, and the ability to send any signal from the keyboard. Consider Spare when your first question is which project or agent a busy node or python process belongs to, and you’d like the answer without opening a terminal.
A familiar workday
Four node processes. Which project is which?
You started a dev server this morning, an agent started another, and a watcher is still running from yesterday. In htop they’re separate rows. The full command line and tree view usually tell you where each one came from, if you read closely.
Spare does that grouping for you. Development work appears under its project folder with its listening port, like “Development · port 3000”. Agent sessions from Claude Code, Codex, Aider, Ollama, and OpenCode appear by project too. Open one to review its processes before you decide what to stop.
See how Spare handles AI agents →Spare, htop, and btop, side by side.
Different scopes. Many developers will want both.
| What matters | htop and btop | Spare |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | In a terminal window, driven by keyboard (both also support the mouse) | In the menu bar, with a larger Recap window |
| How work is organized | One row per process, with sorting, filtering, search, and a tree view by parent | Grouped into apps with their helpers, development projects with ports, and AI agents by folder |
| Acting on a process | Send any signal to the selected process (htop can also tag several at once) | Review, then send a graceful quit or stop request; never offered for macOS system tasks |
| Beyond CPU and memory | htop adds meters and per-process details; btop adds disk, network, and battery views, plus GPU on Apple silicon when built with GPU support | CPU and memory pressure only; no GPU, disk, network, or battery monitoring |
| History | Live view | Up to 30 days of hourly summaries on your Mac, with CSV export |
| Install and license | brew install htop (GPL-2.0-or-later) or brew install btop (Apache-2.0) | Signed, Apple-notarized download (MIT) |
Competitor information: htop’s website, htop’s manual page, btop’s official repository, and Homebrew’s htop and btop formulae (htop 3.5.3 and btop 1.4.7 at review). Reviewed October 6, 2026. This is a documentation-based comparison, not a performance test.
Keep htop or btop for process-level work
When you need to see exact PIDs, sort by any column, follow a process tree, or send a specific signal, a terminal viewer is the right tool. htop can also show a process’s open files if lsof is installed. btop adds polished graphs for disks and network. Spare does not replace any of that.
Consider Spare for a quick answer.
Click the menu bar instead of switching to a terminal. See recognized apps and their helpers together. Find development work by project folder or port. Check whether an agent session is still running in a folder you’ve moved on from. Look back at your day or week in the Recap window.
Spare never closes work automatically. A stop request can still interrupt a server or agent, so review the session before proceeding.
Before you choose
A few practical details.
Do htop and btop work on Apple-silicon Macs?
Yes. Both are available through Homebrew for macOS. Install with brew install htop or brew install btop, then run the command in Terminal.
Does Spare show individual processes?
Spare starts from the group. Open an app, project, or agent to inspect its sessions, and unidentified processes stay available when you want to look at them. It doesn’t offer htop’s per-column sorting or arbitrary signals.
Can Spare force kill a process?
No. Spare sends a normal quit or stop request after you review what it affects. For a stuck process, use your terminal tool or force quit on your Mac.
Does Spare look inside Docker containers?
No. Spare does not inspect Docker containers, and it doesn’t monitor GPU, disk, network, or battery use.
Can I download Spare today?
Yes. Download the signed, Apple-notarized release for Apple-silicon Macs running macOS 14 or later. The source is available on GitHub under the MIT license.
Explore another comparison.
Get Spare
Free to use. Yours to explore.
Download Spare for Apple silicon, or explore the MIT-licensed source on GitHub. Free to use, with no subscription or account.
macOS 14+ · Apple silicon · Signed and notarized