Rex Terminal: Is It Free? Beta Access, Waitlist, and Pricing Explained
How to join the Rex terminal beta, what it costs today, and what's known (and still unknown) about pricing for Mitchell Hashimoto's new app.
What is Rex, and is it free right now?
Rex is free during its current beta, with no account required to use it. There’s word that it will remain free indefinitely and that any monetization plan will be announced before the app reaches a stable release, but that comes from a single unofficial source, not from Superlogical itself. Nothing about pricing, tiers, or licensing has been confirmed publicly, so treat “always free” as a rumor worth watching rather than a settled fact.
TL;DR
- Rex is a new terminal and multiplexer built by Mitchell Hashimoto (creator of Ghostty, Vagrant, and Terraform) under his company Superlogical, and it shares its rendering engine with Ghostty via the MIT licensed libghostty library.
- Access is currently invite-only through a waitlist at superlogical.com, and the app is Mac-only even though the underlying server also runs on Linux and Windows.
- The beta is free with no account needed, and one unconfirmed report suggests it will always be free, with monetization details coming before a stable release.
- No pricing model, tier structure, or licensing terms have been officially announced, so anyone evaluating Rex for long-term workflow use is working with incomplete information.
- It’s unclear whether Rex itself will be open source. Superlogical has said it may release pieces built on libghostty as open source, but the Rex application’s own license hasn’t been stated.
- The product is still version 0.1.0, meaning commands, behavior, and even pricing assumptions could change before any public or stable launch.
- Name
- Maria Alvarez
- Date of birth
- SSN
- Diagnosis
- Balance due
- $412.80
How does the Rex beta waitlist work?
Getting into Rex today means signing up for the waitlist on superlogical.com and waiting for an invite. Once accepted, users download a Mac app that currently installs as “Rex beta,” version 0.1.0. There’s no self-serve signup or open download link: access is gated, which keeps the user base small while Superlogical works out rough edges.
The app itself is macOS only right now. The server component that actually runs your shells and sessions also exists for Linux and Windows, and early clients for other platforms are reportedly in development, but there’s no public timeline for when non-Mac users will be able to run the full Rex experience.
Because it’s an invite-only beta, most people interested in Rex simply can’t try it yet. That alone is one of the biggest practical limitations right now, separate from any pricing question.
Why does Rex’s architecture matter for pricing and access questions?
Rex isn’t just a terminal emulator, it’s a terminal and a multiplexer combined into a single app, with a background server that owns all shells and processes. The app you open is a client that connects to that server. Close the app, and your running programs keep going; reopen it, and you reattach to where you left off.
This client-server split matters for the pricing conversation because it hints at how a future paid tier could work. Products built around a persistent server component often introduce paid features around remote access, team collaboration, or hosted infrastructure, since the server piece is the part that could plausibly run somewhere other than your laptop. Rex already includes Tailscale support built into the server, letting other devices on your tailnet reach your sessions remotely. Nothing confirms this will be a paid feature, but it’s the kind of capability that commercial terminal and dev-tool products frequently gate behind subscriptions.
What’s known about Rex’s relationship to Ghostty, and does that affect licensing?
Rex is not a rename or replacement for Ghostty. Ghostty remains a nonprofit project and isn’t changing. Rex is a separate, commercial product from Hashimoto’s company Superlogical, but it builds on libghostty, the MIT licensed library that powers Ghostty’s text rendering and terminal emulation.
That shared foundation raises a natural question: if the underlying engine is open source, is Rex also open source? As of now, the answer is unclear. Superlogical has indicated it might release additional open source components built on libghostty over time, but no statement has confirmed that the Rex application itself, including its CLI, multiplexer logic, and agent integration features, will be open source. For anyone deciding whether to build workflows or scripts around Rex, this is arguably a bigger open question than pricing, since licensing affects whether you can self-host, audit, or fork the tool if Superlogical’s commercial plans change direction later.
Is Rex worth getting on the waitlist for?
For a narrow group of users, yes: people who run coding agents, live in a terminal all day, or have lost long-running jobs by accidentally closing a terminal window will find real value in Rex’s persistent sessions and its scriptable CLI. The CLI lets you list sessions, create new ones, split panes, send keystrokes, capture output, and run commands with exit-code reporting, all of which makes Rex genuinely useful for automating agent workflows. A built-in skill-setup command also lets coding agents like Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, and Pi report their status (idle, working, blocked, errored) directly into the terminal UI.
But for most people, the honest answer is “not yet, and not fully.” The beta is invite-only and Mac-only, so most interested users can’t even test it today. Commands and behavior can change before stable release. Tmux users won’t find their configs ported over, remote host management has rough edges, and at least one reported case showed Claude Code sessions not surviving a full computer reboot (the persistent server survives app closures, not reboots). Combine those functional gaps with the unresolved pricing and licensing questions, and it’s reasonable to wait and watch rather than commit a full workflow to it right now.
What should developers expect once Rex leaves beta?
Nothing is confirmed, but the signals so far suggest a few likely directions. Rex will probably introduce some form of monetization before or at stable release, based on secondhand reports, though whether that means a subscription, a paid tier for remote/team features, or something else entirely hasn’t been stated. Given the heavy investment in CLI scriptability and agent integration, it’s plausible that advanced automation, multi-machine syncing, or team collaboration features become the paid layer, while core terminal and local multiplexer functionality stays free, mirroring how many developer tools structure free versus paid tiers. None of this is official, so developers budgeting for Rex in a commercial setting should wait for an explicit pricing announcement rather than assume anything from current beta behavior.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Rex terminal free to use?
Yes, during the current beta, Rex is free and doesn’t require an account. There’s an unconfirmed report that it will stay free long-term, with monetization announced before a stable release, but Superlogical hasn’t made an official pricing statement.
How do I get access to the Rex beta?
You join the waitlist at superlogical.com and wait for an invite. There’s no open download or self-serve signup at this stage.
Does Rex work on Windows or Linux?
The Rex app itself is currently Mac-only. The underlying server component runs on Linux and Windows as well, and additional clients for other platforms are reportedly being developed, though no release dates have been shared.
Is Rex open source like Ghostty?
Not confirmed. Rex builds on libghostty, which is MIT licensed, but Superlogical hasn’t stated whether the Rex application itself will be open source. Some additional open source components may be released over time.
What happens to my Ghostty config if I switch to Rex?
Rex checks your existing Ghostty and terminal configs and generates a starting Lua config file for you, noting whether any keybindings needed migrating. It isn’t a full automatic import of Ghostty settings, more of an initial scaffold you can edit from there.