# Alpine vs Himalaya

- Alpine: Menu-driven terminal email client descended from Pine, with built-in help, setup screens and native Windows builds.
- Himalaya: Command-line email client written in Rust that lists, reads, sends and moves mail through shell commands with JSON output.

## Differences

- Alpine is a full-screen terminal client; Himalaya is a command-line program.
- Only Alpine has built-in POP3 and mbox.
- Only Himalaya has built-in JMAP and Maildir.
- On BSD, Alpine runs natively and Himalaya builds from source.
- On Android, Alpine runs through Termux and Himalaya is not available.
- Alpine has mouse support; Himalaya does not.
- Alpine has calendar support; Himalaya does not.
- Alpine has OpenPGP; Himalaya does not.
- Alpine has S/MIME; Himalaya does not.
- Alpine is written in C; Himalaya in Rust.
- Configuration: Alpine uses built-in setup screens, stored in .pinerc, and Himalaya uses TOML file; interactive setup wizard.

## Side by side

| | Alpine | Himalaya |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Interface | Full-screen terminal interface | Command-line tools and prompts |
| Language | C | Rust |
| License | Apache 2.0 | MIT or Apache 2.0 |
| Linux | Native | Native |
| macOS | Native | Native |
| Windows | Native | Native |
| BSD | Native | Build from source |
| Android | Through Termux | Not supported |
| IMAP | Yes | Yes |
| POP3 | Yes | No |
| SMTP | Yes | Yes |
| JMAP | No | Yes |
| Maildir | No | Yes |
| mbox | Yes | No |
| notmuch | No | No |
| OpenPGP | via plugin | No |
| S/MIME | Yes | No |
| OAuth2 sign-in | Yes | via script |
| Threads | Yes | through the IMAP, JMAP and Gmail subcommands |
| Search | built-in search and message selection; server-side for IMAP | built-in query syntax across backends; server-side for IMAP and JMAP |
| HTML mail | built-in HTML-to-text rendering | No |
| Mouse | Yes | No |
| Multiple accounts | Yes | Yes |
| Offline use | No | with the Maildir backend and a sync tool such as mbsync |
| Calendar | Yes | No |
| Contacts | built-in address book; LDAP lookup | No |
| Vim-style keys | No | No |
| Configuration | built-in setup screens, stored in .pinerc | TOML file; interactive setup wizard |

Pages: [Alpine](https://terminalemail.com/clients/alpine/index.md), [Himalaya](https://terminalemail.com/clients/himalaya/index.md)