Top Tools

top_tools.md

Top Tools

General-purpose system monitors

Tool	Written in	Interface	Mouse	Graphs	Standout features	Best for
top	C (procps-ng)	Plain text	No	No	Installed everywhere, scriptable batch mode (top -b)	Servers, minimal systems, quick checks
htop	C	Colored ncurses	Yes	Simple meters	Tree view, scrolling, kill/renice from UI, customizable meters	Everyday interactive use
btop (btop++)	C++	Rich TUI	Yes	Yes	Themes, CPU/mem/disk/net/GPU panels, very polished	Best-looking all-in-one dashboard
bpytop	Python	Rich TUI	Yes	Yes	Predecessor to btop, same look	Legacy (superseded by btop)
bashtop	Bash	Rich TUI	Yes	Yes	The original of the btop line	Legacy (superseded by btop)
atop	C	Text	No	No	Logs history to disk so you can replay past load; per-process disk/net	Post-mortem analysis of past incidents
glances	Python	Colored TUI + web	No	Minimal	Web UI, REST API, exports to InfluxDB/Prometheus, container stats	Remote/headless monitoring
nmon	C	ncurses	No	Bar charts	Toggle panels by key, CSV capture for later analysis	Performance capture on IBM/enterprise boxes
bottom (btm)	Rust	Rich TUI	Yes	Yes	Fast, zoomable graphs, process search/filter, configurable layout	Modern lightweight alternative to btop
zenith	Rust	TUI	Yes	Yes	Zoomable history charts, GPU support	Charts with scrollback history
below	Rust (Meta)	TUI	No	No	cgroup-aware, records and replays history	Containerized/cgroup-heavy hosts
gtop	Node.js	TUI	No	Yes	Dashboard-style charts	Fun/visual, not production

Specialized "top" tools

Tool	Focus	What it shows
iotop	Disk I/O	Per-process read/write rates (needs root)
iftop	Network	Bandwidth per connection/host pair
nethogs	Network	Bandwidth per process
nvtop	GPU	NVIDIA/AMD/Intel GPU usage, memory, per-process
intel_gpu_top / radeontop	GPU	Vendor-specific GPU engine usage
powertop	Power	Wakeups and power drain per process/device, tuning suggestions
ctop	Containers	Docker container CPU/mem/net/IO
virt-top	VMs	libvirt/KVM guest resource usage
kmon	Kernel	Loaded kernel modules and kernel activity
s-tui	CPU stress/thermals	Frequency, temperature, power with built-in stress test
mytop / pg_top	Databases	Active MySQL/PostgreSQL queries
apachetop	Web server	Live Apache/nginx log request rates

Quick picks

For a server where you can't install anything, top is always there. For daily interactive use, htop is the safe default and btop is the prettiest. If you need to know what happened at 3 a.m. last night, atop or below are the ones that record history. And when the question is specifically "who's hammering the disk/network/GPU," reach for iotop, nethogs, or nvtop respectively.