I Switched From GitKraken to This Indie Git Client and I’m Not Going Back

Source: Dev.to

I’ve been using GitKraken for the past three years. It’s a solid tool, no doubt. But when they bumped the price to $99 / year and started locking basic features behind the paywall, I started looking around. I didn’t expect to find anything worth switching to.

Then I stumbled on GitSquid.

I honestly don’t remember how I found it — probably a random thread on Reddit or Hacker News. The website looked clean, the screenshots looked promising, and it had a free tier, so I figured I’d give it a shot. Worst case, I’d uninstall it after 10 minutes like every other “GitKraken alternative” I’d tried before.

That was two weeks ago. I’ve since uninstalled GitKraken.

First Impressions

The install was fast. No account creation, no sign‑in, no “let us send you onboarding emails”, just download the DMG, drag to Applications, open. That alone felt refreshing.

The UI is dark by default (there’s a light theme too if you’re into that), and it immediately felt familiar. If you’ve used GitKraken, you’ll feel right at home. The commit graph is front and center, rendered on canvas with smooth scrolling. Branches are color‑coded, merge lines are clean, and Gravatar avatars show up next to commits.

I opened one of my work repos, a monorepo with about 15 k commits, and the graph loaded fast. No lag when scrolling. That was already better than my GitKraken experience on the same repo.

What Actually Made Me Stay

• Staging area – Drag and drop files between unstaged and staged. Stage individual hunks from the diff view. Choose a tree view or a flat list view. It just works the way you’d expect.
• Integrated terminal – Hit Cmd + \`` and you get a real terminal at the bottom. Not a fake shell, an actual terminal with your shell profile loaded. Great for quick npm commands orgit stash` operations without switching windows.
• Multi‑repo tabs – I usually have 3–4 repos open at any given time. GitSquid handles this with tabs at the top, and they persist across restarts. Simple, effective.
• GitHub / GitLab / BitBucket integration – Connect your account with a PAT, then you can see PRs, create new ones, review them, and manage issues without opening a browser. The clone dialog lets you browse your remote repos and clone directly.
• Profiles – I have a personal GitHub and a work GitLab, each with different email/name/GPG key. GitSquid lets you create profiles and switch between them. The git identity and provider tokens are tied to each profile. No more “oh crap, I committed with my personal email to the work repo.”

The Pricing

The free tier is genuinely usable: all core git operations, the commit graph, diff viewer, conflict resolution, terminal, and one integration. Limits are 3 tabs and 1 profile, which is fine for personal use.

Pro – €49 / year.
For context, GitKraken is $99 / year for their Pro plan and $199 / year for Teams. GitSquid Pro unlocks unlimited tabs, profiles, integrations, plus Gitflow, worktrees, Git LFS, submodules, GPG signing, reflog viewer, statistics, and PR reviews.

No account required for the free tier. No telemetry. No data collection. The license is validated offline with periodic online checks.

What’s Missing

• No support for SSH agent forwarding, so if you use SSH keys through a hardware token you might need to stick with the terminal for push/pull. HTTPS with PAT tokens works great though.
• The app is still relatively new, so the community is small. There’s no plugin ecosystem yet.

Who Is This For

If you’re a developer who:

• Wants a fast, good‑looking Git GUI
• Is tired of paying $99+ for features that should be standard
• Works across multiple repos and git identities
• Doesn’t want to create an account just to use a desktop app
• Uses GitHub, GitLab, or BitBucket

Give GitSquid a try. The free tier costs nothing and takes 30 seconds to set up.

Website: https://gitsquid.com

It runs on macOS (Apple Silicon native), Windows, and Linux.

I have no affiliation with GitSquid. I’m just a developer who found a tool that solved a problem and wanted to share it. If you try it, let me know what you think in the comments.