The Xshell alternative for every desk — free at work too.

01  /  free without the fine print

Free that doesn't ask where you work.

Xshell's free license is genuinely free — for home and school. Open it at the office and commercial use needs a $119 license per user, covering up to two devices. Termalin's Free tier has no such split: the whole desktop app is free for everyone, work included, with no host limits. The paid plans add the encrypted cloud, the browser terminal, Connectors, server monitoring and the AI assistant — and every new account starts with a 14-day Pro trial, no card required.

• ▸Free means the full app — SSH, SFTP with a built-in editor, session recording & replay, the watch grid and the MCP agent, local-only.
• ▸Pro for $8/mo billed yearly adds the end-to-end encrypted cloud vault, sync across devices and cloud recordings.
• ▸Prefer paying once? There's a one-time lifetime Pro deal for early backers — 100 licences, from $149 and rising as they sell.

02  /  every desk

One client on Windows, macOS and Linux — synced.

Xshell is Windows-only. Termalin is one client on all three desktops — the same tabs, files, keys and history on each — and it syncs them end-to-end encrypted: your vault is encrypted on your device before upload, the server stores only ciphertext, and the master password can't be reset by design. Read the security model →

• ▸Native builds for all three desktop platforms, with signed auto-updates.
• ▸The browser cabinet at termal.in/account covers everything else — a real terminal, SFTP and recordings from a phone or tablet, no install.
• ▸Works fully offline — the Free tier is local-only; the cloud is an add-on, not a requirement.

03  /  the part no one else has

An SSH client your AI agents can use too.

Termalin ships a real MCP server in two forms. A hosted endpoint lets Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code, Codex and Cursor sign in and reach the hosts you choose keylessly — through an outbound Connector, with per-connection command rules and an audit log. The in-app MCP lets an agent open its own sessions or step into yours, while a key custodian signs on its behalf, so it never holds a key — you watch every move in the grid, and each agent action is marked in the recording. A handful of clients now speak MCP; nothing with that hosted, keyless, governed shape ships in Xshell.

04  /  switching — honestly

Moving over, and where Xshell still wins.

Termalin imports hosts from an ~/.ssh/config, a CSV, PuTTY or MobaXterm — get your hosts into any of those formats and they come across in a click. Export back to an SSH config or CSV any time: no lock-in, either direction. The honest part: if you're a home user on Windows, Xshell's free license is hard to argue with — it's the full commercial feature set, free of charge, on up to three of your machines, from a long-established vendor. Termalin's case starts when you need macOS or Linux, encrypted sync, built-in SFTP — or a client you can also use at work without a license.