If you’re a macOS developer who hasn’t revisited your launcher setup in a few years, the landscape has changed more than you might expect. Raycast launched, grew fast, raised money, and is now the default choice for a lot of developers who’ve switched. Alfred has continued maturing quietly. Both are good. The right choice depends on what you actually use a launcher for.

What They Both Do

At their core, both Raycast and Alfred replace Spotlight as your primary macOS launcher. You hit a hotkey, type a query, and get fast access to apps, files, calculations, web searches, and whatever else you’ve configured. Both are significantly faster and more capable than Spotlight for developer workflows.

The divergence is in philosophy. Alfred is a power-user tool with a mature ecosystem and a one-time licence model. Raycast is a developer-focused platform with a free tier, a built-in extension store, and optional cloud features behind a subscription.

Raycast: The Case For

The extension ecosystem is genuinely good. The Raycast store has hundreds of extensions maintained by an active community. Practically every tool developers use daily has a Raycast extension: GitHub (search PRs, open repos), Linear (create issues, switch contexts), Vercel (deployment status), Figma (recent files), Brew (manage packages), and many more. Installing and updating extensions is handled within Raycast itself — no manual folder management.

Built-in developer utilities. Raycast ships with more out of the box than Alfred. The built-in window manager means you may not need a separate app for tiling layouts. There’s a clipboard history, a unit and currency converter, a calculator that evaluates expressions like 1500 * 1.2 * 0.85, and a colour picker. The snippets system is fully functional in the free tier.

Scripting is approachable. Raycast Script Commands let you run shell scripts, Python, Node, or Ruby and surface the output as a Raycast command. If you’ve never written a script for Alfred (which requires learning its XML-based workflow format), Raycast’s script commands feel more natural — it’s just a file with a shebang and some metadata comments.

It’s free for most use cases. The free tier covers everything solo developers need. The Pro subscription (around £8/month) adds AI features and cloud sync, but you can ignore those entirely and still have a fully functional, powerful launcher.

Alfred: The Case For

Workflows are extremely powerful. Alfred’s workflow system is its deepest feature. Workflows chain triggers, conditions, scripts, and actions into automation pipelines. If you’ve spent time building Alfred workflows, they can be more sophisticated than anything Raycast’s scripting supports — multi-step logic, web request parsing, complex output formatting, conditional branching. The workflow builder is visual and has been refined over many years.

One-time purchase. The Alfred Powerpack (required for most advanced features) costs £34 once. No subscription. If you have a complex workflow setup and don’t need cloud sync, you pay once and you’re done. For developers who are allergic to SaaS subscriptions for desktop tools, this is meaningful.

Privacy-first by default. Alfred stores everything locally and has no account requirement. Raycast has pushed cloud features and AI integrations progressively, and while core features remain local-only, the trajectory of the product is toward more cloud connectivity. If you process sensitive client data and prefer to keep your launcher’s search history and snippets entirely off-network, Alfred’s model is simpler to trust.

Mature file navigation. Alfred’s file navigation — using → to browse into a folder, actions on files, the Find and Open keywords — has a depth that Raycast’s file commands don’t quite match for keyboard-driven file system traversal.

Head-to-Head on Common Developer Tasks

Opening a project in VS Code or Cursor: Raycast wins slightly here with the Open With action and extensions that understand project folders by type (Git repos, Node projects). Alfred handles this well too but typically needs a workflow to match Raycast’s default behaviour.

GitHub integration: Raycast’s GitHub extension is excellent — search issues, view PR status, open notifications, switch repos. Alfred has equivalent functionality via third-party workflows but requires more setup.

Running shell commands: Roughly equivalent. Both let you run terminal commands from the launcher, though Raycast’s terminal integration feels more polished for common cases like opening a folder in your terminal.

Snippet expansion: Both do this well. Alfred’s snippet system has slightly more configuration options (including clipboard content insertion); Raycast’s is cleaner to manage.

Workflow automation: Alfred wins decisively for complex automation. Raycast’s scripting is good for simple things; Alfred workflows are better for multi-step automation with error handling and conditional logic.

The Honest Recommendation

If you’re starting fresh or you’re primarily a developer who wants good out-of-the-box integrations with modern tools (Linear, GitHub, Vercel, Figma), Raycast is the easier choice. The free tier is genuinely sufficient. The extension ecosystem means you’ll find something for most tools you use.

If you have an existing Alfred workflow setup you’ve invested in, or if you want a launcher with no subscription model and a strong preference for local-only operation, Alfred remains the better choice — particularly with the Powerpack licence, which is inexpensive compared to a year of Raycast Pro.

The one scenario where switching from Alfred to Raycast clearly isn’t worth it: if you’ve built complex multi-step Alfred workflows that automate significant parts of your workday. Porting those to Raycast script commands is possible but not trivial, and Alfred workflows can do things Raycast scripts currently can’t.

Both tools are well-maintained and updated regularly. Whichever you pick, you’ll be in better shape than relying on Spotlight.