The best Claude Code GUI in 2026: 8 apps for using it without a terminal

Disclosure: Enjoy is our product. We checked every app below against its maker’s own pages and code on October 27, 2026, and we say where another app is the better pick, Anthropic’s own included.

Claude Code GUIs compared

Claude Code started in the terminal. A GUI puts it in a window: conversations in a sidebar, changes you read as diffs, and buttons where the terminal has commands. Anthropic says its desktop app “runs the same underlying engine with a graphical interface,” and the independent apps run Claude Code itself, on your own Claude account, so the agent doing the work is the same in all of them. What differs is everything around it.

App	Best for	Price, checked October 27, 2026	Runs on	Agents
Claude Code Desktop	Most people with a Claude plan	Included in Claude Pro ($20 a month), Max (from $100), Team and Enterprise	Mac, Windows; Linux in beta	Claude Code
Claude Code for VS Code	Staying in your editor	Included in the same plans	VS Code, Cursor and other editors built on VS Code	Claude Code
Enjoy	Claude Code beside every other lab’s agent	Free; Enjoy Cloud adds your phone, other computers and teammates (pricing)	Mac, Windows, Linux	Claude Code, Codex, Grok Build, Antigravity, Muse Code, OpenCode
Nimbalyst	A free, open-source workspace with visual editors	Free for individuals	Mac, Windows, Linux; iOS companion	Claude Code, Codex; OpenCode and Copilot in alpha
CloudCLI	Claude Code in a browser	Free to run yourself; hosted from €7 a month	A browser, served from any computer with Node.js 22	Claude Code, Cursor CLI, Codex
opcode, formerly Claudia	A free desktop app, if its age doesn’t bother you	Free	Mac, Linux; Windows from source	Claude Code
Conductor	Parallel agents on a Mac	Free; Pro $50 a month	Mac	Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode
crystl	A Mac terminal built for agents	Free; Guild $170 a year	Mac	Claude Code, Codex and any command-line agent

Prices are as each maker lists them, before tax. Every app runs Claude Code on your own account, and Claude’s pricing leaves it out of the free plan: “Claude Code is included in all paid plans.” Anthropic’s docs say a Claude Console account works too. Orca, T3 Code and Paseo, free, open-source apps built for running many agents at once, run Claude Code as well; our Conductor alternatives guide compares them.

If you’re moving to Claude Code from Antigravity, which removes Claude from its free accounts on November 2, any of these keeps it in a window rather than a terminal.

Claude Code Desktop, in the Claude app

Best for: most people with a Claude plan who want Claude Code in a window.

“In the Claude Desktop app, Claude Code is the Code tab,” say Anthropic’s docs. Each conversation is a session with its own history and project folder, and you can “work on multiple tasks in parallel.” After Claude edits your code, “the diff view lets you review modifications file by file before creating a pull request,” and you can comment on single lines for Claude to fix. Claude can also “start a dev server and open it in the Browser pane to verify its changes.” Its permission modes run from Manual, where “Claude asks before editing files or running commands,” to Plan and Auto. If you’ve been in the terminal, /desktop moves the session into the app, and the two “share configuration and project memory via CLAUDE.md files.”

It runs on Macs, Intel and Apple silicon, on Windows, and on Linux in beta, installed with apt or a .deb file.

Price: included in every paid plan: Pro at $20 a month, or $17 a month billed yearly, Max from $100, Team and Enterprise.

Watch for: it runs only Claude. “By default, Worktree is off and Claude works in the project folder itself,” so parallel sessions share one folder unless you turn it on, and “Session isolation requires Git.” Some of Claude Code stays in the terminal: “The dontAsk permission mode is available only in the CLI,” --print is “Not available. Desktop is interactive only,” and “Plugins aren’t available in WSL sessions.” On Linux, “Computer Use isn’t yet available.”

Claude Code for VS Code and Cursor

Best for: staying in your editor, with Claude Code in a panel beside your files.

Anthropic’s extension “provides a native graphical interface for Claude Code, integrated directly into your IDE,” and Anthropic calls it “the recommended way to use Claude Code in VS Code.” You can review and edit Claude’s plans before accepting them, @-mention files with line ranges, and “open multiple conversations in separate tabs or windows.” It installs in VS Code 1.94.0 or later and in Cursor, and from the Open VSX registry in other editors built on VS Code, “like Devin Desktop or Kiro.” The extension and the CLI “share the same conversation history,” so claude --resume in a terminal picks up where the panel left off.

Price: included in the same plans. Anthropic says “any paid Claude subscription (Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise) or a Claude Console account works, and no API key is required.”

Watch for: “Some features are only available in the CLI.” The panel has a subset of Claude Code’s commands and skills, and no ! shortcut for shell commands or tab completion. In JetBrains IDEs there’s no panel: Anthropic’s plugin “runs the claude command in your IDE’s integrated terminal” and shows Claude’s changes in the IDE’s diff viewer.

Enjoy

Best for: Claude Code beside every other lab’s agent, across all your projects, without a terminal.

Enjoy is a desktop app for Mac, Windows and Linux that installs Claude Code for you, “without typing commands in a terminal,” and signs it in through your browser. Then it gives every agent “the same message box, so you don’t need to learn each one’s commands.” For Claude Code, that means:

• Its permission modes, in a menu. Pick Manual, Plan, Auto or the others, and approve each request on a card that shows what the agent wants to run.
• Your terminal history, brought in. Enjoy imports a project’s past Claude Code and Codex conversations, and the agent picks up where you left off.
• Your work, in view. View changes shows what each commit changed, line by line, agents open your site beside the conversation and click through it, and you can edit your project’s files in Enjoy.
• More than Claude. Codex, Grok Build, Antigravity, Muse Code and local models through OpenCode run in the same app, and you can switch agents mid-conversation. When Claude Code runs out of usage, Enjoy moves to another of your Claude accounts or waits for the reset, then carries on.

Price: Enjoy is free on your computer, with no account. Enjoy Cloud, a monthly subscription, adds your phone and any browser, your other computers and teammates. See pricing.

Watch for: Enjoy isn’t open source. Claude Code’s own commands, such as /clear and /model, aren’t in its list of skills, “because they would change the session Enjoy keeps for the conversation.” The phone, other computers and teammates need Enjoy Cloud, and scheduled workflows run only while your computer is awake with Enjoy open.

Nimbalyst

Best for: a free, open-source workspace where Claude Code’s work is something you edit visually.

Nimbalyst, formerly Crystal, is an “Open-source visual workspace for building with Codex, Claude Code, OpenCode, and other coding agents.” Its README says it’s “Free and MIT licensed. Desktop app for macOS, Windows, and Linux, with an iOS companion app.” You can “Run several coding agents at once, each isolated in its own git worktree,” track sessions on a kanban board, and “Step through the agent’s proposed edits in the rendered document and accept or reject each one,” in editors for markdown, mockups, diagrams and code.

Price: free. Its pricing says of the app, “No feature limits, no trial period.” Wiki Teams, a wiki shared across a team, is $20 a user a month, and it’s “in Beta right now and free to use while it is.”

Watch for: Claude Code and Codex are its main agents. OpenCode and GitHub Copilot are “in alpha.”

CloudCLI

Best for: Claude Code in a browser, on your computer or from your phone.

CloudCLI, also called Claude Code UI, is “A desktop and mobile UI for Claude Code, Cursor CLI, and Codex,” per its README. Run npx @cloudcli-ai/cloudcli with Node.js 22 or later, open http://localhost:3001, and “all your existing sessions are discovered automatically.” It has a chat view, a built-in shell, a file explorer, Git tools and plugins, and it works “across desktop, tablet, and mobile.” A companion app for Mac and Windows keeps it in your menu bar or tray. It’s open source under AGPL-3.0, and version 1.37.6 came out on October 27.

Price: free to run yourself. CloudCLI Cloud, which hosts the environment for you, starts at €7 a month for one environment, and “There is no permanent free tier for the hosted service.”

Watch for: “All Claude Code tools are disabled by default,” so you turn on the ones you want before Claude can do much. Run yourself, it needs your machine to stay on, and its README lists phone access as “Any browser on your network.”

opcode, formerly Claudia

Best for: a free desktop app around Claude Code, if you don’t mind that it has gone quiet.

opcode is “A powerful GUI app and Toolkit for Claude Code,” open source under AGPL-3.0, with more than 22,000 stars on GitHub. It lets you browse “all your Claude Code projects in ~/.claude/projects/,” resume past sessions, build custom agents, track usage and costs, manage MCP servers, and save checkpoints you can jump back to.

Price: free.

Watch for: its latest release, v0.2.0, came out on August 31, 2025, with downloads for Mac and Linux, and the last change to its code was on October 16, 2025. On Windows, you build it from source. It needs the Claude Code CLI installed first.

Conductor

Best for: running several agents side by side on a Mac, each in its own workspace.

Conductor’s homepage says “Run parallel coding agents on your Mac.” You “Create parallel Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor agents in isolated workspaces,” then “review and merge their changes,” and its harnesses page adds OpenCode.

Price: its pricing has a free plan that runs “multiple coding agents in parallel” with your own subscriptions and keys. Pro, at $50 a month, adds Conductor Cloud, multiplayer, its API and the mobile app, and Teams is $60 a user a month.

Watch for: “Conductor is not available for Windows or Linux yet,” says its installation page.

crystl

Best for: a native Mac terminal built for supervising many agents.

crystl is “a multitasking terminal for AI coding agents.” It “runs any CLI agent, including” Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity CLI, Kimi Code, opencode, aider, goose and Ollama, and its homepage says “Claude Code has the deepest integration.” “The free plan includes isolated shards & parallel sessions, floating cards, the agent activity panel,” and more, with scheduling for up to three agents or commands and its iPhone app over Wi-Fi.

Price: free. Guild, at $170 a year, adds agent orchestration, unlimited scheduling and the iPhone app from anywhere.

Watch for: “crystl is macOS only,” and its own comparison lists it as closed source.

When to stay in the terminal

The terminal is still all of Claude Code. Anthropic’s extension docs list what only the CLI has: every command and skill, the ! shortcut and tab completion. And scripting, with --print or the Agent SDK, is “Not available” in its desktop app. If you live in tmux, script Claude Code, or lean on commands a GUI leaves out, stay where you are.

Trying one costs little. Claude’s desktop app shares the CLI’s settings and CLAUDE.md files and can bring its sessions over, the extension shares its conversation history, and Enjoy, CloudCLI and opcode read the conversations the CLI saved, so you can go back and forth.

How we compared

We read each maker’s homepage, pricing and docs, and the GitHub repositories of the open-source apps, on October 27, 2026, and every one is linked below. Licenses, star counts and release dates come from GitHub that day. We quote each maker’s own words for its limits and don’t count features a maker hasn’t documented. These apps change weekly, so we recheck this guide against its sources at least once a month, and the date at the foot of the page says when we last did.