Lazygit

Lazygit is a free, open-source terminal UI for Git, written in Go, that wraps the most painful day-to-day Git workflows — interactive rebases, hunk staging, cherry-picks, bisects, worktrees — behind a keyboard-driven, multi-pane TUI. We rate it 92/100 — for any developer who already lives in a terminal, it is the single biggest quality-of-life upgrade you can make to your Git workflow this year, and it costs nothing.

What is Lazygit?

Lazygit was created by Australian developer Jesse Duffield and first released on May 19, 2018. It is licensed under MIT, written entirely in Go on top of the gocui terminal library, and runs as a single self-contained binary on macOS, Linux, Windows, FreeBSD and Termux/Android. The most recent stable release as of April 25, 2026 is v0.61.1, shipped on April 13, 2026, which polished the new GitHub pull-requests integration introduced in v0.61.

It targets a very specific person: the developer who is fluent enough in Git to know the commands but tired of typing git rebase -i HEAD~10, opening a TODO file in their editor, swapping commit lines, exiting, resolving, and continuing — every single time. As of this review the project has crossed 77,000 GitHub stars, 2,788 forks and is on v0.61.1; notable sponsors include Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke and Ruby on Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson.

Key Features of Lazygit

• Stage individual lines or hunks with one keystroke: Press space on a line, v to start a range, or a for a whole hunk. No more editing arcane patch files by hand to split commits.
• Interactive rebase that is actually interactive: Press i to start, then squash (s), fixup (f), drop (d), edit (e), or move commits up and down with ctrl+k/ctrl+j — no editor TODO file required.
• Cherry-pick, bisect, amend-old-commit, custom patches: Power features that normally require five terminal tabs and a Stack Overflow tab become single-key operations, including cherry-pick (shift+c/shift+v), bisect (b) and amending an arbitrary historical commit (shift+a).
• Worktrees built in: Create, switch and remove Git worktrees from the branches view with w — finally a UI for the most underused Git feature.
• Undo and redo via the reflog: Press z to undo your last action and shift+z to redo. It silently uses the reflog so you can roll back a botched rebase or a stray drop without panicking.
• Custom commands & keybindings: A complete custom command system lets you bind any shell command to a key, so you can extend Lazygit to match your team's exact Git workflow.
• GitHub pull requests in the branches panel: The new v0.61 integration with the GitHub CLI shows PR status icons next to your branches and lets you open the PR with shift+G.
• Single, dependency-free binary: Install via Homebrew, Scoop, apt, dnf, pacman, Nix, Conda, Go, Winget and more — no runtimes, no Node, no Electron, no daemons.

What Users Say About Lazygit

Sentiment in 2026 is overwhelmingly positive. The Hacker News thread "Lazygit Turns 5" remains one of the most enthusiastic developer-tool threads of the past few years, with hundreds of commenters describing it as their permanent replacement for the raw git CLI. Bartek Plotka's recent deep dive on bwplotka.dev calls out the tool's command log — which shows the actual git commands being executed under the hood — as the reason it has become his "main git tool after a short try". Dev.to writers consistently report being measurably faster within a week despite years of CLI fluency.

The most common complaints are honest and worth knowing: the keyboard-shortcut surface area is large (the cheat sheet runs to dozens of bindings) and there is real cognitive overhead in the first hour. On the tig vs. lazygit vs. gitui Hacker News thread, several long-time tig users argue Lazygit can feel "busy" with five panels visible at once, and prefer the simpler, more focused tig for browsing history. A small but vocal minority on GitHub Discussions also note that very large monorepos (50k+ files) can make the file panel feel sluggish on cold open.

Lazygit Pricing

Lazygit is fully free and open-source under the MIT license. There is no paid tier, no "pro" version, no telemetry and no required account. The project is funded entirely through GitHub Sponsors; if you use it daily, sponsoring Jesse is the closest thing to a price.

Plan	Price	Key Limits
MIT Open Source	$0 forever	Every feature, every platform, no usage limits, no telemetry, no account required.
Optional GitHub Sponsorship	From $5/month	Funds maintenance and gets your avatar on the README — no extra features unlocked.

Who Should Use Lazygit?

Best for: Terminal-first developers who use Git daily, anyone who regularly does interactive rebases or splits commits by hunk, Vim/Neovim users who want a Git UI that respects modal keyboard navigation, and DevOps engineers SSHed into remote machines where a GUI is not an option.

Not ideal for: Developers who already do all their Git inside a heavyweight IDE like JetBrains or Visual Studio and are happy there, beginners who have not yet learned what an interactive rebase is (Lazygit assumes you know the underlying Git concepts), and people who want a polished mouse-driven GUI on the level of Fork, Tower or GitKraken.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Single self-contained Go binary, <7 MB, available in every major package manager.
• Truly free, MIT-licensed, no paid features paywalled — and no telemetry by default.
• Drastically lowers the friction on interactive rebase, hunk staging and cherry-picking — the operations that punish you most in raw git.
• Built-in undo/redo via the reflog removes most of the fear of experimenting with destructive operations.
• Active maintenance: 77k stars, 2,788 forks, 960 open issues being actively triaged, and a stable release every few weeks.

Cons:

• Steep keybinding learning curve — expect to keep ? open as a cheat sheet for the first week.
• Can feel visually busy on smaller terminal windows; you will want at least 100 columns of width.
• Not a teaching tool: Lazygit assumes you already know what concepts like rebase, fixup and reflog mean.
• Limited mouse support compared to native GUIs and a fairly minimal merge-conflict editor.

Alternatives to Lazygit

The most common alternatives are tig (older, simpler, history-browser focused — great for code archaeology, weaker for editing), GitUI (Rust-based, even faster on huge repos, smaller community) and full GUIs like Fork, Tower and GitKraken (mouse-first, paid, much heavier). For raw editing power inside a terminal, Lazygit is the modern default.

Verdict: Is Lazygit Worth It?

For any terminal-comfortable developer, Lazygit is one of the highest-leverage free tools you can install today. The 92/100 rating reflects an exceptionally polished, actively maintained, completely free product that meaningfully changes how you interact with the most-used tool in software engineering — held back from a perfect score only by its keybinding learning curve and busy default layout. If you have ever sworn at git rebase -i, install it tonight; if you live in JetBrains and never leave its Git panel, you can safely skip it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Lazygit free?

Yes. Lazygit is fully free and open-source under the MIT license, with no paid tiers and no telemetry. The only optional payment is sponsoring the maintainer on GitHub Sponsors from $5/month.

What platforms does Lazygit support?

macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon), Linux (x86_64, ARM64, ARMv6, 32-bit), Windows (x86_64, ARM64, 32-bit), FreeBSD and Termux on Android. Install with Homebrew, Scoop, apt, dnf, pacman, Nix, Conda, Go or Winget.

How does Lazygit compare to tig?

Tig is older, simpler and read-mostly — excellent for browsing history but limited for editing. Lazygit is a full editing UI with interactive rebase, hunk staging, cherry-pick, bisect, worktrees and undo/redo. Most developers who try both keep Lazygit for daily work and tig for quick history exploration.

How does Lazygit compare to GitUI?

GitUI is a similar terminal Git UI written in Rust. It is generally faster on very large repositories but has a smaller feature set, a smaller community (~20k stars vs Lazygit's 77k+) and less mature support for advanced workflows like interactive rebase and custom commands.

Is Lazygit open source?

Yes — fully MIT-licensed and developed in the open at github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit with 77,000+ stars and 2,788 forks as of April 2026.

Does Lazygit work over SSH on a server?

Yes. Because it is a single static Go binary with no GUI dependencies, Lazygit runs identically inside any SSH session, tmux pane, devcontainer or GitHub Codespace, which is a major reason DevOps engineers favour it over GUI clients.