Software Alternatives & Reviews

Homebrew VS MacPorts

Compare Homebrew VS MacPorts and see what are their differences

Homebrew logo Homebrew

The missing package manager for macOS

MacPorts logo MacPorts

The MacPorts Project is an open-source community initiative to design an easy-to-use system for compiling, installing, and upgrading either command-line, X11 or Aqua based open-source software on the Mac OS X operating system.
  • Homebrew Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-29
  • MacPorts Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-29

Homebrew videos

Homebrew Review: Coopers Lager - Taste Test

More videos:

  • Review - Homebrew Review | Alchemist Class by Mage Hand Press (featuring Designer Mike Holik)
  • Review - Northern Brewer Cream Ale Homebrew Review Tasting

MacPorts videos

Linux Tools for your Mac. Package Management. HomeBrew, MacPorts, Fink

More videos:

  • Review - Install and Testing MacPorts on an M1 Mac
  • Review - Installing MacPorts on macOS Catalina

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Homebrew and MacPorts)
Front End Package Manager
Windows Tools
94 94%
6% 6
Package Manager
89 89%
11% 11
Developer Tools
93 93%
7% 7

User comments

Share your experience with using Homebrew and MacPorts. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Homebrew seems to be a lot more popular than MacPorts. While we know about 877 links to Homebrew, we've tracked only 5 mentions of MacPorts. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Homebrew mentions (877)

  • Top Homebrew Alternative: ServBay Becomes the Go-To for Developers
    Homebrew is a highly popular package manager on macOS and Linux systems, enabling users to easily install, update, and uninstall command-line tools and applications. Its design philosophy focuses on simplifying the software installation process on macOS, eliminating the need for manual downloads and compilations of software packages. - Source: dev.to / 6 days ago
  • Tools for Linux Distro Hoppers
    Hopping from one distro to another with a different package manager might require some time to adapt. Using a package manager that can be installed on most distro is one way to help you get to work faster. Flatpak is one of them; other alternative are Snap, Nix or Homebrew. Flatpak is a good starter, and if you have a bunch of free time, I suggest trying Nix. - Source: dev.to / 28 days ago
  • SQLite Schema Diagram Generator
    Are you using SQLite that ships with macOS, or SQLite installed from homebrew? I had a different problem in the past with the SQLite that ships with macOS, and have been using SQLite from homebrew since. So if it’s the one that comes with macOS that gives you this problem that you are having, try using SQLite from homebrew instead. https://brew.sh/. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
  • How to install (Ubuntu 22.10 VM) vagrant on Mac M1 ship using QEMU
    Before we begin, make sure you have Homebrew installed on your Mac. Homebrew is a package manager that makes it easy to install software and dependencies. You can install Homebrew by following the instructions on their website: https://brew.sh/. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Perfect Elixir: Environment Setup
    I’m on MacOS and erlang.org, elixir-lang.org, and postgresql.org all suggest installation via Homebrew, which is a very popular package manager for MacOS. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
View more

MacPorts mentions (5)

  • Need help with running OpenBSD on VirtualBox
    Brew & macports have libvirt & virt-manager that are used to manage qemu via GUI. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Brew Is a Bad Neighbor
    Or instead of all this, try MacPorts[0], which in my experience has 99% of what you need. The biggest drawbacks are less support from quite niche packages (the ones that sets up its own homebrew tap), and a bit slower updates. But then I found it bearable much more than homebrew’s downsides. [0]: https://macports.org. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • How to prevent WireGuard from starting up (menubar) on MacOS?
    You can install wireguard-go and wireguard-tools (or boringtun, which is Cloudflare's userspace implementation) using either MacPorts or Brew. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Newbie Problem with MacOS Terminal Stuff
    That being said, I'm going to assume that you're working on MacO. Flatpaks aren't going to be an option, that's only going to work if you're using Linux (like Fedora, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Arch, Mint, and so on). If you need to install HandBrake, you may want to consider using macports.org, or brew.sh, these are projects that provide additional libraries and packages for MacOS, this way you can install additional... Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Top 10 trending github repos of the week🚽.
    On macOS you can also install the latest release with MacPorts:. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Homebrew and MacPorts, you can also consider the following products

Chocolatey - The sane way to manage software on Windows.

pkgsrc - pkgsrc is a framework for building over 17,000 open source software packages.

iTerm2 - A terminal emulator for macOS that does amazing things.

Homebrew Cask - Install with ease. Your software is just one command away from being ready and raring to go. Forget all about babysitting the install process step by step, from website to cleanup. ls /usr/local/Caskroom google-chrome .

Visual Studio Code - Build and debug modern web and cloud applications, by Microsoft

Conda - Binary package manager with support for environments.