The honest comparison

A Termius alternative
you actually own.

Termius is a polished SSH client — but the basics sit behind a subscription, and your vault is tied to their account and their servers. NetShell does the same job, keeps your keys on your own devices, and is free.

Switch for free See the full table
$0NetShell — every feature, forever
~$120/yrTypical Pro SSH-client subscription
$600+What that costs you over five years

Same core job — a terminal, a key vault, and sync. One of them just stops charging you for it.

Feature by feature

The whole picture,
nothing hidden.

  NetShell Termius Pro
Price Free — every feature ~$120 / year (Pro)
On-device key generation Yes — ed25519 & RSA Paid tier
Where your keys live Your hardware-backed Keychain Vendor's encrypted vault
Key & password sync E2E via iCloud Keychain (no vendor server) Through a vendor account
Account required None Yes
Fail-closed host verification Yes Not surfaced
Destructive-command guard Yes No
Face ID app lock + auto-relock Yes Varies
On-device AI assistant Apple Intelligence + bring-your-own Cloud add-on
Telemetry Off by default On
Platforms iPhone, iPad & Mac Desktop, mobile (account-tied)

Reflects publicly documented Termius Pro features as of 2026. Termius is a trademark of its owner; NetShell is independent and not affiliated.

Why it matters

What those rows
mean for you.

Your keys are never hostage

Your private keys live in your device's hardware-backed Keychain and sync through iCloud Keychain — not a vendor vault. There's no account to lose access to, and nothing to "migrate out of" if you leave.

No account, nothing phoning home

No sign-up, no profile, no telemetry by default. The app doesn't report how you run your servers, and there's no cloud account that can be breached, locked, or mined.

Security they don't even ship

Fail-closed host verification stops a password reaching an unknown host, and a destructive-command guard catches rm -rf, DROP TABLE and force-pushes before they land — both free, both on by default.

Moving over

Switching takes
about two minutes.

1

Bring your keys

Import your existing OpenSSH keys, or generate fresh ed25519 keys on-device. See SSH keys.

2

Add your hosts

Re-add servers in seconds, or let the network scanner find them. See Add a connection.

3

Cancel the subscription

Everything syncs end-to-end through your own iCloud Keychain. Nothing to pay, nothing phoning home.

The obvious questions

"Okay, what's the catch? "

Is it really free?

Yes — every feature, no paid tier, no trial clock. The terminal, key vault, sync, Docker, the AI assistant: all of it, at no cost.

Then how is it not a scam?

There's no server to run on your behalf and no data to sell — your keys never touch a NetShell server, and analytics is off by default. That removes the costs (and incentives) a subscription is usually covering.

Will my keys be safe?

Safer, arguably — they sit in the iOS hardware-backed Keychain behind Face ID and sync only through Apple's end-to-end encrypted iCloud Keychain. Read the encryption overview.

Stop renting your terminal.
Own it for free.

iPhone, iPad & Mac · iOS 17+ · No subscription · No telemetry by default.

Download NetShell free