top vs htop — Which Linux Process Monitor to Use

top and htop both show a live view of processes and system resources. The short version: use top because it’s always there, and htop when you want a nicer interface for interactive troubleshooting. Here’s how they compare and how to read both.

The comparison

	top	htop
Pre-installed	Yes, everywhere	Usually needs installing
Interface	Plain text	Color, mouse support
Sorting	Keyboard (P, M)	Click a column or F6
Process tree	Limited	F5, clear tree view
Kill processes	k then type PID	F9, select from list
Filter by name	No	F4
Scripting	Excellent (-b batch mode)	Not designed for it

The practical split: top for scripts and servers where you can’t install anything; htop for interactive debugging on machines where it’s available.

Reading the top header

Both tools show the same underlying numbers. In top:

top - 14:30:00 up 45 days,  2 users,  load average: 0.52, 0.58, 0.59
Tasks: 287 total,   1 running, 286 sleeping
%Cpu(s):  5.3 us,  2.1 sy,  0.0 ni, 92.0 id,  0.5 wa
MiB Mem :  15921 total,   1234 free,   8765 used,   5921 buff/cache

• Load average — three numbers: the 1-, 5-, and 15-minute averages. Compare them to your CPU core count. On a 4-core box, a load of 4.0 means fully busy; above that means processes are queuing.
• %Cpu(s) — us user, sy system/kernel, id idle, wa I/O wait. High wa points at a disk bottleneck, not a CPU shortage.
• Mem — note that buff/cache is reclaimable; the system isn’t really using all that memory.

top keyboard shortcuts

Key	Action
P	Sort by CPU
M	Sort by memory
k	Kill a process (prompts for PID)
r	Renice (change priority)
c	Toggle full command path
1	Show per-core CPU
h	Help
q	Quit

htop keyboard shortcuts

Key	Action
F3	Search for a process
F4	Filter by name
F5	Tree view
F6	Sort by column
F9	Send a signal (kill)
Space	Tag a process
F10	Quit

htop’s tree view (F5) is genuinely useful for understanding systemd services: it shows which child processes a service spawned, so you can see the whole family at once.

Targeting specific processes

Both can focus on a single application’s processes:

# Monitor all nginx workers
top -p $(pgrep -d',' nginx)
htop -p $(pgrep -d',' nginx)

# Monitor one user's processes
top -u www-data
htop -u www-data

When you want neither — a quick snapshot

For a non-interactive snapshot (in a script or over a flaky SSH link), skip both and use ps:

ps aux --sort=-%cpu | head -10    # top 10 by CPU
ps aux --sort=-%mem | head -10    # top 10 by memory

Or top in batch mode, which prints once and exits:

top -b -n 1 | head -20

FAQ

Is htop better than top? For interactive use, htop is friendlier — color, mouse, easier sorting and killing. But top is always installed and works in scripts, so both have a place. Many admins reach for top first by habit and htop when digging in.

htop isn’t installed — how do I get it? sudo apt install htop on Debian/Ubuntu, sudo dnf install htop on RHEL/Fedora.

What’s btop? A newer, graph-heavy terminal monitor with smooth real-time charts. It’s the nicest-looking of the three but, like htop, needs installing. Good for visual checks during troubleshooting.

For the full set of monitoring tools, see Linux monitoring commands.