Betwixt is a free, open-source HTTP/HTTPS traffic inspector for macOS that presents your machine's network activity inside a familiar Chrome DevTools–style panel — without requiring you to open a browser at all.
What is Betwixt?
Betwixt is a local proxy tool that sits between your Mac and the internet, capturing every outbound request your applications make and displaying the results in an interface any front-end developer will recognise immediately: the Network tab from Chrome DevTools, running as a standalone native window. It targets the gap between full commercial proxies and the browser's built-in inspector — covering traffic from apps, scripts, and CLI tools that a browser devtools panel simply cannot see.
What does Betwixt do best?
Its strongest suit is zero-friction inspection of non-browser traffic. When I'm debugging a native macOS menu-bar app that silently calls home, or chasing down exactly what headers a Node.js script is sending to a third-party API, Betwixt is the fastest path from curiosity to answer. Point your app at 127.0.0.1:8008, flip on Betwixt, and the full request/response waterfall appears — status codes, timing, headers, payload — styled exactly like the DevTools panel you already know by heart.
The Chrome DevTools metaphor is genuinely useful here. There is almost no learning curve if you have ever spent time in the Network panel. Filters, search, timeline columns — all behave as expected. That familiarity turns what would otherwise be a tool you have to learn into a tool you can just use.
Is Betwixt free?
Yes — Betwixt is completely free and fully open-source, published on GitHub under the MIT licence. There is no premium tier, no telemetry nag, and no account required. Because it is community-maintained rather than commercially backed, updates arrive irregularly; it is worth checking the GitHub releases page before relying on it for a production debugging workflow.
Who should use Betwixt?
Betwixt is built for developers who already live in the browser devtools but need visibility beyond the browser. If you write desktop apps, Electron applications, command-line tools, or shell scripts that make HTTP calls, Betwixt fills the diagnostic gap that browser DevTools cannot. It is also a thoughtful first step for security-curious users who want to audit what their installed Mac software is actually sending over the network, without buying into the full complexity of Charles Proxy or Proxyman.
It is probably not the right call for teams who need SSL pinning bypass, scripted request replay, or a breakpoint-and-edit workflow mid-request. For those scenarios Charles Proxy and Proxyman are still the mature choices — though they cost money and carry a significant feature surface area that beginner users rarely need.
How does Betwixt compare to Charles Proxy and Proxyman?
Charles Proxy and Proxyman are both polished commercial tools with deep feature sets: breakpoints, rewriting rules, throttling presets, iOS device proxying, and persistent session saving. They cost money and justify the price when those capabilities matter daily. Betwixt makes a different bet — stay free, stay simple, and nail the one interaction most developers want most of the time: show me every request my app just made.
Proxyman in particular has a native macOS UI that feels more at home on the platform and receives regular updates. If you need to intercept HTTPS traffic from iOS simulators or apply rewrite rules in production debugging, Proxyman is the better investment. But if you are already comfortable in Chrome DevTools and you just want a quick window into your Mac's HTTP traffic without a trial popup, Betwixt earns its keep.
What are the best Betwixt alternatives?
The field is competitive. Proxyman is the friendliest native macOS option and has a generous free tier. Charles Proxy is the long-standing industry standard — battle-hardened but showing its age in the UI. mitmproxy is a powerful open-source alternative for developers comfortable with the terminal and Python scripting. For strictly browser traffic, nothing beats the Network panel built into Chrome or Safari DevTools. Betwixt sits in the middle of this range: open-source like mitmproxy, but with a graphical interface; graphical like Charles, but free and narrower in scope.
