Some Typometer measurements on i3 here:

  # Title                   Min     Max     Avg     SD
  1 xterm 397               3.1     4.0     3.5     0.2
  2 Alacritty 0.15.1        3.6     4.8     4.2     0.2
  3 xfce4-terminal 1.1.4    2.9     6.8     4.4     0.3
  4 Ghostty 1.2.0           11.3    15.5    13.0    0.7
  5 kitty 0.42.2            11.7    21.3    15.8    3.3

lower is better

https://github.com/frarees/typometer

Typometer

Typometer is a tool to measure and analyze the visual latency of text editors.

Editor latency is the delay between an input event and a corresponding screen update — in particular, the delay between keystroke and character appearance. While there are many kinds of delays (caret movement, line editing, etc.), typing latency is a major predictor of editor usability.

Check the article typing with pleasure to learn more about editor latency and its effects on typing performance.

> While there are many excellent terminal emulators available, they all force you to choose between speed, features, or native UIs. Ghostty provides all three. In all categories, I am not trying to claim that Ghostty is the best (i.e. the fastest, most feature-rich, or most native). But Ghostty is competitive in all three categories and Ghostty doesn't make you choose between them.

Ghostty doesn’t claim to be the fastest.

https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty

Bonus VS Code:

  # Title      Min     Max     Avg     SD
  1 VS Code    10.8    19.7    13.0    1.2