Termius
Hosts and keys in the vault · local on the free tier, one device only · in their cloud from the paid tier up Terminal, SFTP, iOS, Android Credential sharing across a team $10/month to sync $20/user/month for a team
Two tools, one question: where do your credentials live?
Termius is a full SSH client: terminal, SFTP, mobile, teams, and it is very good at that. Kestro opens no interactive session and never will. What really separates them is not the feature list: from the paid tier up, Termius keeps your hosts and keys in its cloud, and Kestro has no cloud to keep them in.
macOS 11+ · Windows soon
Two ways to hold a list of credentials
The same staging box, opened from both sides.
What each one does with the address, the key, and what you open.
Kestro
No vault at all · your ssh, your keys, your agent · nothing is copied anywhere No interactive terminal Cloud SQL, IAP, Session Manager Projects, services, scripts one payment, per machine
Point by point
What each one covers, and what it costs.
| Termius | Kestro | |
|---|---|---|
| Systems | macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android | macOS (Windows in progress) |
| Interactive terminal | yes, that is the product | no |
| SFTP | yes | no |
| SSH tunnels | yes, from the free tier | yes |
| Where hosts and keys live | local vault when free · their cloud from the paid tier up | your ssh config and your agent, nothing else |
| Across several machines without a cloud | no: syncing is the reason to pay | yes: each machine reads its own config |
| Google Cloud SQL | no | yes, via the official proxy |
| Google VMs over IAP | no | yes, via gcloud |
| EC2 over Session Manager | no | yes, via the aws CLI |
| Beyond access | nothing | Git repos, scripts, service monitoring, sharing a port |
| Notion of environment | free-form labels | production is marked, and closed to the assistant |
| Access for an AI assistant | no | yes, within limits you set |
| Team credential sharing | yes, that is the Team plan | no |
| Price, one machine | free without syncing · $10/month with | €29.99$29.99£25.99CHF 25.90CA$40.99A$45.99 once |
| Five machines over three years | $3,600 on the Team plan ($20/user/month) | five licences, paid once |
Recorded on 7 August 2026 from Termius’ pricing page and documentation. Prices are the ones shown that day, billed annually.
What Kestro adds
Four things an SSH client does not do.
They do not make it a better SSH client: Termius is, by a wide margin. They make it a tool that answers different questions.
The access that isn’t SSH
A Cloud SQL database through Google’s official proxy, a VM with no public address over IAP, an EC2 instance over Session Manager. Three tools, three syntaxes, three sets of docs, and here, one list with one switch.
Nothing to entrust to anyone
There is no account to create, so no master password to lose, no vault to have audited, and nothing to answer when someone asks where your production credentials are stored. Kestro uses what your machine already holds.
A boundary for your assistant
Claude or Cursor see the tunnels you open to them, one object at a time. Production is closed by default, and a refusal says which one. An SSH client has no reason to offer that; a tool that holds the door does.
The rest of the day
Your repos and their branch, your services watched from your own machine, your pinned scripts, a port exposed to the web for the length of a demo. Same window, same list.
Kestro1 tunnel open · 1 service isn’t answering
bastion-prodprodSSHshellbastion.kestro.internalclosed
notes-dbstagingPostgreslocalhost:5432pg-staging.eu-west-1.rdsopen
run-eventsprodMongolocalhost:27017mongo-prod.atlasclosed
⌘K palette↑↓ navigate␣ togglecloses if you click elsewhere
run-tracker , zsh
➜
Applying 2 migrations to shop-staging-db…
20240612_add_orders_index ok
done in 1.4s
run-tracker , zsh
# every door, and which ones are open
➜
tunnel notes-db ouvert :5432
tunnel run-events ouvert :27017
tunnel bastion-prod fermé
On your machine
Everything stays with you.
Your connections run from your computer to your servers, never through us.
No account
Nothing to create, no password.
Your keys stay put
SSH, Google Cloud, AWS: Kestro uses your own tools, locally.
No usage statistics
We don’t know what you open, or when.
One exception
Your licence renews with us. Nothing else leaves.
What Kestro does not do
Four gaps, and they are serious.
If any one of them matters to you, Termius is the right tool: this page is not trying to talk you out of it.
No terminal
Kestro opens doors; it does not sit you in front of a remote shell. If your day is made of interactive sessions on servers, you need an SSH client, and Kestro will never replace one.
No SFTP, no mobile
No file transfer, and nothing on iOS or Android. Termius covers both, and that is a genuine difference in scope.
Nothing to share across a team
Kestro has no shared vault: everyone keeps their own config. That is the exact flip side of what we sell, having no cloud costs this much, and for a team that wants to hand out credentials from one central place, it is a gap and not a virtue.
macOS only, for now
The Windows version is in progress; there is nothing on Linux. Termius runs on all five systems.
Pricing
You pay once. That’s it.
A tool you open forty times a day shouldn’t send an invoice every month.
Kestro licence
€29.99$29.99£25.99CHF 25.90CA$40.99A$45.99€39.99$39.99£34.99CHF 33.90CA$54.99A$61.99 · Launch offer · upcoming price
1 computer · one-time
- Every feature of the app, no tiers, no “Pro” edition
- One year of updates included, then renew if you want to
- The app stays yours, renewed or not
- One key, the same on all your computers
- Switch machines whenever you like, no limit
- No account to create: the key arrives by email
Or download it for free first →
Refunded within 14 days, no questions asked.
Questions we get asked
Can the two coexist?
Yes, and it is the most common way to use them: Termius for interactive sessions, Kestro for the tunnels that need to stay open while you work elsewhere. Both launch your ssh with your keys and they do not step on each other, as long as they do not open the same local port, Kestro will in fact tell you a port is already taken before trying.
Termius stores nothing until I pay. Where is the problem?
There isn’t one, and this page does not claim otherwise: the free tier keeps everything local, on a single device. The point is elsewhere, syncing is precisely what you pay for, so the moment a team adopts Termius seriously, hosts and keys live in their cloud. That is a legitimate decision, but it is one, and some contracts in finance, healthcare and regulated SaaS forbid it. If yours does, the question is settled before you compare features at all.
Does Kestro encrypt my keys?
It holds none. Your SSH agent answers passphrase prompts, your ssh config describes your hosts, your gcloud and aws profiles carry your cloud credentials. Kestro composes commands and runs them in a real terminal; it has no vault because it has nothing to put in one.
What about a team of five?
Five Kestro licences are paid once. Termius’ Team plan is $20 per user per month, $1,200 a year for five people, and it brings something Kestro does not have: credentials handed out from a central place. If that is what you are after, the price is justified. If your developers already have their own access and you only wanted to spare them retyping commands, you are paying for syncing you have no use for.
Are the prices in this table current?
They were recorded on 7 August 2026 from Termius’ pricing page, billed annually, and the date sits under the table for that reason. Prices change without notice: check on their side before deciding, and write to us if you find a discrepancy, we will correct it.