the best UI for Claude Code, compared honestly

There is no single best UI for Claude Code. If you want free and open source, use opcode (formerly Claudia) on the desktop or CloudCLI in a browser. If you are on Linux or Windows, those are your options. If you run many agents at once on a Mac and the hard part is supervising them, that is what crystl is for.

Claude Code ships as a CLI. Anthropic does not ship a graphical client for it, so the interfaces around it are all third party, all young, and all moving fast. That last part matters more than any feature list: two of the projects below changed names in the last year and one of them has not had a public commit in nine months. Anything you read about these tools, including this page, needs a date on it.

at a glance

Star counts, release tags, and commit dates in this page come from the GitHub API on July 31, 2026.

opcode, the project people still search for as Claudia

Claudia was renamed. The repository that used to be getAsterisk/claudia now redirects to github.com/winfunc/opcode, with a landing page at opcode.sh. If you searched for a Claudia GUI for Claude Code and landed on a dead link, that is why. It is AGPL-3.0 and sits at roughly 22,300 stars, the most starred dedicated Claude Code GUI.

It is a Tauri 2 desktop app, so it is a real native window rather than a browser tab, and the README lists Windows 10 and 11, macOS 11 and later, and Ubuntu 20.04 and later. What it gives you, per its own README:

• a visual browser for your projects and past Claude Code sessions, with search
• custom agents you define once and run in the background
• a usage dashboard with token and cost tracking
• MCP server management from a UI instead of a config file
• checkpoints and a session timeline you can navigate back through
• a CLAUDE.md editor with live preview
• per-agent permissions and process isolation

Being able to branch a session and go back to a known-good checkpoint is genuinely useful, and neither a plain terminal nor crystl does it.

Two things to know before you commit to it. First, installation: there is a v0.2.0 release from August 31, 2025 with a macOS universal .dmg and Linux .deb and .AppImage builds, but the README still says release executables will be published soon and walks you through building from source with Rust and Bun. Second, and more important, the most recent commit on the default branch is dated October 13, 2025, against 332 open issues. The repository is not archived and the maintainers may well pick it back up. But if you are choosing a tool in mid-2026, open the commit history yourself before you build a workflow on it.

Pick opcode if you want a free, open source, cross-platform desktop app, you like the checkpoint model, and you are comfortable running a project that has been quiet for a while.

CloudCLI, formerly and still widely known as claudecodeui

siteboon/claudecodeui is a web UI: a Node server on your machine, a browser tab as the interface. AGPL-3.0-or-later, around 13,000 stars, and unlike opcode it is being worked on right now. Its releases page shows v1.37.0 on July 29, 2026, and there were commits on the day this page was checked.

Setup is one command, which is a real advantage:

npx @cloudcli-ai/cloudcli

That needs Node 22 or later and serves the UI on localhost:3001, reading your existing ~/.claude configuration. It drives Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor CLI rather than Claude Code alone. Inside it you get a chat view, an integrated shell terminal, a file explorer with syntax highlighting and editing, git staging and commits, session resumption, and a plugin system. There is an experimental Docker sandbox mode, and optional native desktop companion apps for macOS and Windows in the GitHub releases.

Because it is a web app, it works from any device on your network, including a phone, with no app to install. No native app on this page can do that. Worth knowing on the safety side: all Claude Code tools are disabled by default and you enable them yourself, which is a sensible default for something reachable over a network. The flip side is that the README's self-hosted path is a browser pointed at your machine's IP and port, and securing that exposure is yours to handle. There is also a hosted version, CloudCLI Cloud. The README puts it at €7 per month for the hosted environment, on top of whatever agent subscription you already pay for, and your code runs on their infrastructure rather than yours.

Pick CloudCLI if you want free and open source, you want to reach your agents from a browser or a phone, or you are not on a Mac. It is the best-maintained free option on this page.

the plain terminal

Running claude in iTerm2, Ghostty, Alacritty, or Terminal.app is not a fallback position. It is the reference implementation. Every feature lands there first, nothing is translated or reinterpreted by a third party, and there is no extra process between you and the agent. If you run one agent at a time, this is very hard to beat, and adding tmux gets you persistent sessions and split panes for free.

The ceiling is specific and it only shows up when you scale past one agent. A terminal treats every session as the same untyped stream of text, so it cannot tell you which of your six sessions is blocked on an approval, which finished twenty minutes ago, or which one has been sitting on a question while you read email. Approval prompts scroll past inline with everything else. Close a tab and the conversation goes with it. Two agents in the same working directory will happily overwrite each other unless you set up git worktrees yourself.

Stay in the terminal if you mostly run one agent at a time, or you want zero layers between you and the CLI.

crystl

The disclosures first, because they decide it for a lot of people: crystl is macOS only, it is closed source, and while there is a free tier that covers isolated shards, approval panels, the activity panel, history, SSH, and token tracking, the orchestration features cost $170 a year. If open source or Linux or Windows is a requirement, stop here and use CloudCLI. Nothing below changes that.

crystl is built around one problem: supervising several agents at once. It runs the Claude Code or Codex subscription you already pay for, locally, on your own repos, and never sits in the billing path for your tokens. The parts that follow from that focus:

• Isolated shards put each agent in its own git worktree and branch, so several agents can work one repo at the same time without collisions.
• Approval panels float over the screen, color-coded by project, so a pending decision finds you instead of scrolling past in a buffer you are not looking at.
• The agent activity panel shows every session's state at once, which is the thing a terminal structurally cannot do.
• Conversation history survives closing a session and rebooting.
• An agent-callable CLI lets an agent spawn and steer other agents, and the iPhone app lets you answer an approval away from the desk.

Pick crystl if you are on a Mac, you regularly have three or more agents running, and your bottleneck is knowing which one needs you right now.

what the alternatives do better

Plainly, because it matters more than the feature grid:

• Free and open source. opcode and CloudCLI are both AGPL. You can read the code, fork it, audit what it does with your keys, and keep using it if the maintainer walks away. crystl is closed source and you cannot do any of that.
• Cross-platform. opcode builds for Windows and Linux. CloudCLI runs anywhere Node does. crystl is Mac-only and there is no version coming for anything else.
• Browser and phone access without a subscription. CloudCLI is a web app, so any device on your network is a client. crystl's phone access beyond your local Wi-Fi is a paid feature.
• Self-hostable. CloudCLI is a server you run. If you want your agent interface on a box you control, that is a shape crystl does not have.
• Checkpoints. opcode's session timeline lets you rewind. crystl keeps history but does not branch it.
• Nothing at all. The plain terminal has no update to install, no process to trust, and no license to renew.

other projects worth knowing

Not full comparisons, but they come up in the same searches and the facts are worth having:

• Nimbalyst, previously Crystal (stravu/crystal, no relation to crystl), is an MIT-licensed desktop app for macOS, Windows, and Linux that runs multiple agents in parallel git worktrees, with a mobile companion. It is actively developed and is the closest free, open source analog to isolated shards.
• Vibe Kanban is Apache-2.0 and takes a different angle: a kanban board for orchestrating agents rather than a terminal or chat UI. Around 27,600 stars, last pushed April 2026.
• claude-code-webui shows up in search results but the repository is archived. Do not start there.

how to choose in one pass

• On Windows or Linux: opcode or CloudCLI. crystl is not an option.
• It has to be open source: opcode, CloudCLI, or Nimbalyst.
• You want it in a browser, or on your phone, for free: CloudCLI.
• You want checkpoints and rewind: opcode.
• You run one agent at a time and like the CLI: stay in the terminal, add tmux.
• You are on a Mac, running several agents at once, and losing track of them: crystl.

If you read this and picked CloudCLI, the page did its job. If you run one agent at a time, you do not need any of this, and the free tools here are good.

further reading

• Claude Code in iTerm2 vs. crystl
• Warp vs. crystl
• Managing multiple AI sessions
• Running two agents on the same repo