Zellij is a free terminal workspace for people who do their work in a terminal. It arranges work in tiled, floating, or stacked panes that users can move and resize with mouse or keyboard controls. KDL layouts can specify panes, tabs, commands, and plugins, making workspace setups reproducible and shareable. Users can switch between named sessions and restore their pane structure and commands, including after reboots. A built-in web server enables browser access and remote session sharing with authentication and HTTPS for network connections. It is off by default, and the documentation recommends a reverse proxy on untrusted networks because the server has no rate limiting. Plugins use WebAssembly and can be written in any language that compiles to WASM; Rust has an official SDK and scaffolding tools. Zellij works with existing terminal emulators, shells such as bash, zsh, and fish, and editors including vim, neovim, emacs, and helix. It runs inside a terminal rather than replacing one, and requires no account or online presence.
Who it is for
Zellij suits developers and operations-oriented users who work in terminals and want configurable panes and restorable sessions. Its browser access and read-only observer tokens may also suit remote collaboration.
What is good
- Free and open source; no account required
- Tiled, floating, and stacked panes
- Sessions can be restored after reboots
- Layouts can define panes, tabs, commands, and plugins
- Browser sharing supports authenticated HTTPS access
What to know first
- Runs inside a terminal; does not replace one
- Web server has no rate limiting
- Web server is off by default
Verdict
Zellij is a terminal-based workspace with configurable layouts, session restoration, and remote sharing options. Note the terminal requirement and the web server’s security limitations before enabling network access.
Zellij plans and pricing
All plansCompared on terminal multiplexers
- Free plan
- Yes
- Persistence scope
- local
- Session synchronization
- Yes
- Collaboration features
- Yes
- Custom pane layouts
- Yes
- Plugins or extensions
- Yes
- Access platforms
- Linux, macOS, Windows terminals; browser web client
