Best Free Git Clients in 2026
Three of the four Git clients here are free without qualification. The fourth, GitKraken, is free for public repositories only, and that asterisk is the single most useful fact on this page, because it is exactly the condition that makes a tool unusable at work while looking free on the download page.
Beyond that, this is a comparison about temperament rather than capability. They all commit, branch, merge and rebase. What differs is whether you want to see the graph, live in the terminal, or have the tool hide Git's sharper edges from you.
Here is what each one is, checked August 2026.
Quick comparison
| Client | Price | Interface | Open source | Rating | Reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lazygit | Free | Terminal UI | Yes | not rated | - |
| GitHub Desktop | Free | Graphical, simplified | Yes | not rated | - |
| Sourcetree | Free | Graphical, full | No | 4.4 | 397 |
| GitKraken | Free for public repos | Graphical, visual graph | No | 4.5 | 198 |
Ratings aggregated by Toolradar. Only the two commercial tools have review presence, for the reason below.
Only the paid tools have ratings, and that is the pattern
Sourcetree aggregates to 4.4 across 397 reviews and GitKraken to 4.5 across 198. Lazygit and GitHub Desktop have no aggregated rating at all, despite GitHub Desktop being the most widely installed client in this comparison.
This is the clearest version of something that recurs across developer tooling. Review directories index products with a commercial motion behind them: a vendor, a sales page, a purchase to verify. Lazygit is a terminal tool installed with a package manager and GitHub Desktop is a free download attached to an account you already have. Neither generates the purchase event a directory is built around.
The consequence for you is simple. In this category the ratings tell you about the two products a company markets, and say nothing about the two that might suit you better. Do not read the absence as a signal.
Lazygit: the terminal one people convert to
Lazygit is free and open source, and it runs in your terminal.
It is the answer for anyone who already lives in a terminal and finds switching to a graphical app for staging a hunk absurd. Keyboard-driven, fast, and genuinely good at the fiddly operations: staging individual lines, interactive rebase, cherry-picking, resolving conflicts.
The learning curve is a day. After that most converts describe it as faster than either raw Git commands or a graphical client, because the common operations are one keystroke and the state is always visible.
If you work over SSH on remote machines, this is also the only option here that comes with you.
GitHub Desktop: the gentlest introduction
GitHub Desktop is free and open source.
It deliberately exposes a small part of Git: commit, push, pull, branch, open a pull request. That reduction is the product. For someone learning, or for a designer or writer contributing to a repository, it removes the ways you can frighten yourself.
The trade is that when you need something it does not expose, an interactive rebase, a complicated conflict, you drop to the command line anyway. It is a fine tool that assumes there is another tool.
Best for beginners, and for anyone whose Git usage is genuinely simple and always will be.
Sourcetree: the free full-featured graphical client
Aggregated rating 4.4 across 397 reviews. Sourcetree is free, from Atlassian, and unlike GitHub Desktop it exposes essentially all of Git.
Interactive rebase, submodules, patch handling, Git Flow: it is all there in a graphical interface, at no cost, for private repositories included. Among free graphical clients that hide nothing, it has no real competitor.
It is not open source, and it has a reputation for being slow on very large repositories. On an ordinary project you will not notice; on a monorepo with deep history you will.
For someone who wants to see the whole of Git in a window without paying, this is the answer.
GitKraken: the best-looking graph, with the public-repo catch
Aggregated rating 4.5 across 198 G2 reviews. GitKraken is free for public repositories, with Pro from $4.95 per user per month.
Its commit graph is the clearest visualisation of branch history available, and on a messy repository with many branches that clarity genuinely helps you understand what happened before you try to fix it.
The restriction is the thing to internalise: private repositories need Pro. Since most professional work is private, GitKraken is effectively a paid tool for most people, and $4.95 is a modest price for the interface if the graph is what you want.
Evaluate it knowing that, rather than discovering it when you open a work project.
What a Git client does not fix
The client is not the problem. Most Git pain comes from not understanding what a merge or a rebase does to history, and a graphical interface can make that worse by turning a consequential operation into a button. The clients that help most are the ones that show you the state clearly, which is why Lazygit and GitKraken's graph get recommended by people who already know Git.
Learn the recovery commands regardless of client. git reflog is the one that gets you out of almost anything, and no client on this list makes it unnecessary. Knowing that your commits are almost never actually gone turns Git from frightening to merely annoying.
Your editor probably has one built in. VS Code, JetBrains and Neovim all ship Git integration good enough for daily work. Adding a separate client is worth it when you need the graph or the staging precision, not by default.
The one setting worth changing in any of them
Whichever client you land on, change the default merge behaviour deliberately rather than accepting whatever it ships with.
Most graphical clients default to creating a merge commit for every integration. On a busy repository that produces a history where the graph is mostly bookkeeping: dozens of commits that record only that a branch was merged, obscuring the commits that changed something. Six months later, working out when a behaviour changed means reading past all of it.
The alternatives are rebasing before merging, which replays your commits on top of the target and keeps history linear, or squashing a branch into one commit that describes the change as a unit. Neither is universally correct. Linear history is easier to read and rewrites what actually happened; merge commits are honest about the branching and noisier.
What matters is that your team picks one and the client is configured to match, because a repository where three people use three defaults produces the worst of all of them. This is a five-minute conversation that saves a recurring argument, and it belongs in your contributing guide rather than in each person's preferences.
How to choose
If you live in the terminal, Lazygit, free and open source, and it travels over SSH.
If you are learning or your needs are simple, GitHub Desktop, free and deliberately narrow.
If you want all of Git in a window at no cost, Sourcetree, which is the only free graphical client that hides nothing.
If the branch graph is what you are buying, GitKraken, and budget $4.95 a month because private repositories are not covered by free.
The honest default for most developers is the editor's built-in tooling plus Lazygit for the fiddly operations. That combination costs nothing, covers everything, and does not require a second window.
Related: our guide to free code editors covers the editor side, and the Dupple reviews directory has current pricing.
FAQ
Is GitKraken free?
Only for public repositories. Private repositories require Pro, which starts at $4.95 per user per month. Since most professional work happens in private repositories, treat GitKraken as a paid tool with a free tier for open source rather than a free client.
Which Git client is best for beginners?
GitHub Desktop, because it exposes a small, safe subset of Git and makes the common operations obvious. The trade is that you will eventually meet something it does not do, at which point the command line or a fuller client becomes necessary.
Do I need a Git client at all?
No. The command line does everything, and your editor almost certainly has integration good enough for daily work. A dedicated client earns its place for two things: visualising a complicated branch history, and staging changes precisely, line by line rather than file by file.
What is the best free Git client for private repositories?
Sourcetree among graphical clients, since it is free for private work and hides nothing. Lazygit and GitHub Desktop are also free with no repository restriction. GitKraken is the only one here that treats private repositories as a paid feature.
Which Git client is rated highest?
GitKraken at 4.5 across 198 aggregated reviews, just ahead of Sourcetree at 4.4 across 397. Lazygit and GitHub Desktop have no aggregated ratings, because free developer tools installed through a package manager or bundled with an account do not generate the purchase a review directory verifies.
