BranchBay
A native Rust client drawn on the GPU, built for people who live in more than one repository.
- Licence: $20 once for 2 computers, 14-day trial, no account, no telemetry.
- Packages: apt, AUR, Gentoo, Nix, Homebrew on Linux, AppImage, tarball.
- Good for: many repositories (Launchpad, groups, profiles, tray), merge conflicts, pull requests from the app, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket and Azure DevOps including self-hosted.
GitKraken Desktop
The best-known cross-platform client, built on Electron, with a cloud side for teams.
- Licence: free for local and public repositories; paid tiers billed annually for private repositories and most features.
- Packages: .deb, .rpm and a tarball.
- Good for: teams already on GitKraken's Workspaces, Jira and AI features.
Sublime Merge
From the makers of Sublime Text: native, fast and keyboard-driven, with no hosting integration.
- Licence: one-time purchase per user with three years of updates; unlimited evaluation.
- Packages: apt, yum and pacman repositories, plus a tarball.
- Good for: raw speed, commit search and Sublime Text key bindings.
SmartGit
A long-standing Java client with a very wide feature set.
- Licence: free for non-commercial use with registration; subscription or perpetual licence with one to three years of updates for commercial use.
- Packages: .deb and a tarball; needs the bundled or a system Java runtime.
- Good for: breadth, including Git-flow, submodules and SVN.
GitButler
A newer client with a Rust core and a web-technology interface, centred on virtual branches: several branches applied to one working directory at once.
- Licence: free while in development.
- Packages: .deb and AppImage.
- Good for: trying the virtual-branches workflow.
Gittyup
A free, open-source Qt client that continues GitAhead.
- Licence: MIT, free.
- Packages: Flatpak, AppImage and the AUR.
- Good for: a free graph-centred GUI with a diff view and blame.
Git Cola and gitg
Two free, open-source staples found in most distribution repositories: Git Cola (Python and Qt) and gitg (GNOME).
- Licence: GPL, free.
- Packages: in Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora and Arch repositories; gitg is also on Flathub.
- Good for: a lightweight staging and history viewer with zero cost.
lazygit and gitui
Terminal user interfaces rather than GUIs, but the first choice of many Linux developers who live in a terminal or in Neovim.
- Licence: MIT, free and open source.
- Packages: in most distribution repositories, plus Homebrew and the AUR.
- Good for: keyboard-only Git without leaving the terminal.
Popular clients that skip Linux
If you came from one of these on a Mac or Windows machine, there is no official Linux build to move to.
- Git Tower: macOS and Windows, sold as a yearly subscription.
- Fork: macOS and Windows, one-time purchase.
- Sourcetree: macOS and Windows, free with an Atlassian account.
- GitHub Desktop: macOS and Windows; Linux only through a community fork.
How to choose
- Dozens of repositories, several accounts, work and personal: BranchBay.
- Keyboard only, never leave the terminal: lazygit or gitui.
- Free and open source above all: Gittyup, Git Cola or gitg.
- A team already paying for GitKraken's cloud features: GitKraken Desktop.
- Fast and minimal, no hosting integration needed: Sublime Merge.