Termius vs Onepilot
A polished cross-platform SSH client versus a mobile-first agentic IDE. Both run on your iPhone. They were built for different jobs.
TL;DR
Termius is the most polished, most cross-platform mobile SSH client on the market. Onepilot is the mobile-first agentic IDE — SSH plus everything around it: a deploy wizard for framework agents like OpenClaw and Hermes, in-app chat with your servers, automated agent debugging, and iPhone-native file browser, git, and cron integrations that make Claude Code and Codex CLI feel native on the phone. If you want a plain, dependable mobile terminal, get Termius. If you want broader scope — Termius-grade SSH plus a full AI ops surface — take Onepilot, especially if you run coding agents or AI agents.
Full disclosure: we make Onepilot. We've kept this honest because if it isn't, you'll notice in five minutes.
At a glance
| Termius | Onepilot | |
|---|---|---|
| SSH terminal | Yes | Yes |
| Mosh resilient sessions | Yes | Roadmap |
| SFTP file browser | Yes (Pro) | Yes |
| Port forwarding | Yes (Pro) | Roadmap |
| Snippets / command library | Yes | Yes |
| Credential sync across devices | Yes (Pro) | iOS Keychain |
| Cross-platform clients | iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, Linux | iOS |
| Run Claude Code / Codex CLI in-terminal | Yes (manual setup) | Yes, with file browser, git, cron, channel routing around it |
| Deploy framework agents (OpenClaw, Hermes) | No | Yes — guided wizard, persistent on server |
| In-app chat with servers and agents | No | Yes |
| Automated agent debugging | No | Yes |
| Agent control via Telegram / Discord / Slack | No | Yes |
| 23+ LLM providers (wizard flow) | No | Yes |
| Cron job manager | No | Yes |
| Git diffs / commits / branches | No | Yes |
| Soul Designer for agent personalities | No | Yes |
| Open positioning | Closed-source, freemium | Framework-agnostic, no vendor lock-in |
| Price | Free plan + Pro paid | Free plan + Pro paid (same model as Termius) |
Where Termius wins
Cross-platform parity. Your hosts, keys, and snippets follow you to a Mac, a Linux desktop, a Windows laptop, an Android phone. If you bounce between machines, this alone is the reason to pay for it.
Maturity.It's been on the App Store for years, has a polished credential vault, port forwarding, an SFTP browser, and a team plan with shared vaults. The rough edges are sanded down.
Beginner-friendly UI.Hosts and credentials live in a tappable list. No keyboard chords to learn. If you're new to SSH, Termius gets you connected in under a minute.
Where Onepilot wins
Two agent surfaces, not one.
- Framework agents. OpenClaw, Hermes, and similar terminal-based agent frameworks install through a guided wizard. Pick the framework, plug in an LLM provider and API keys, choose a messaging channel, and the agent runs persistently on your server. You supervise it from your phone or from chat.
- Terminal-native agents. Claude Code and Codex CLI live in the terminal, same as on a laptop. SSH in, run
claudeorcodex, use them interactively. Onepilot's value here is the layer around the shell.
A full AI ops surface.
- In-app chat.Talk to your server — and to deployed agents — directly in the app. Ask “what changed in the last hour?” or “tail the nginx error log and summarize” and get an answer without typing the commands yourself.
- Automated agent debugging. When a deployed agent gets stuck, errors out, or runs against an unexpected output, Onepilot inspects the failure, surfaces the relevant log slice, and proposes a fix you can approve from your phone. No SSHing in to read 400 lines of stack trace.
- File browser, git, cron, Soul Designer. Read what an agent just wrote with syntax highlighting for 20+ languages. Diff and commit changes. Schedule a recurring run. Customize agent personality without editing config files by hand.
Drive deployed agents from chat. Telegram, Discord, or Slack become a second supervisor surface. Your iPhone is one access point, not the only one.
Framework-agnostic.Memory and config sit on your server in formats you own. Switch the agent framework next month and the SSH layer doesn't care.
Who Termius is for
You want a plain, polished, cross-platform mobile terminal. You don't run AI agents and aren't planning to. You bounce between iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, and Linux, and the cross-device sync is what you're paying for.
Who Onepilot is for
You want everything Termius gives you on iPhone — SSH, key auth, snippets, file browser — plus the layer above it. You run (or want to run) AI coding agents and framework agents on your servers. You'd rather supervise an agent from chat than tail logs over SSH. You want a single app where the terminal, the file browser, the git tools, and the agent ops live together.
The honest take
If all you need is a mobile terminal, get Termius — it's mature and excellent at exactly that. If you want broader scope and you use coding agents or AI agents in any form, take Onepilot. You don't lose Termius's strengths; you add an AI ops layer Termius doesn't have.
Migrating from Termius
There's nothing to migrate, in a literal sense. Both apps store SSH keys in the iOS Keychain, both speak OpenSSH key formats, and your servers don't know which client you connect with. Add your hosts to Onepilot the same way you added them to Termius — paste the key or generate a new one — and you're connected. Most users keep both apps installed: Termius for fast straight-shell work, Onepilot when they need to deploy or check on an agent.
FAQ
Is Onepilot a Termius replacement?
For pure SSH, yes — they overlap on the basics (terminal, key auth, snippets, file browser). For cross-platform sync, not yet — Onepilot is iOS-only. For running Claude Code or Codex from your phone and deploying OpenClaw or Hermes agents on a server, Termius doesn't compete — that's the layer Onepilot adds.
Does the Onepilot wizard install Claude Code and Codex?
No. Claude Code and Codex are interactive terminal CLIs — you install them once on your server (or use them on whatever machine they already live on) and run them inside an Onepilot SSH session. The wizard is for persistent framework agents like OpenClaw and Hermes that run as background processes.
Does Onepilot support Mosh?
Mosh is on the roadmap, not in the current build. If your only requirement is a session that survives a Wi-Fi-to-LTE handoff, Blink Shell or Termius is the better pick today.
Can I use my existing Termius SSH keys with Onepilot?
Yes. Export the OpenSSH private key from Termius (or copy from ~/.ssh/ if you have it on a Mac) and import it into Onepilot. The key file is portable.
Is Onepilot open source?
The Onepilot iOS app is closed-source. The agent frameworks it deploys (OpenClaw, Hermes) are open. The 'no vendor lock-in' claim is about your data and your agents, not about Onepilot's source code itself.
See Onepilot in action
Onepilot ships on the App Store soon. Drop your email and we'll send one note when it's live.
Join the waitlistWant the three-way breakdown? Read the full Termius vs Blink Shell vs Onepilot guide.