Best Keyboard Maestro alternative in 2026

Five Keyboard Maestro alternatives with facts read 25 August 2026 — for people who want the automation without building the macro first. Prices, platforms, what each can actually see, and the honest answer for Linux.

How we put this list together: Jarvis (getjarvis.eu) is our product — this site is getjarvis.eu — so treat the #1 spot as an editorial opinion with an obvious interest, and check the sourced facts yourself. Every competitor fact here was read on 25 August 2026 from a primary source: keyboardmaestro.com and wiki.keyboardmaestro.com for Keyboard Maestro's price, version, macOS floor, licence terms and action model; folivora.ai and docs.folivora.ai for BetterTouchTool; raycast.com/pricing, raycast.com/windows and manual.raycast.com for Raycast; autohotkey.com and the vendor's own AutoHotkeyDocs repository for AutoHotkey, whose rendered docs return HTTP 403 to automated clients. Two figures we deliberately do not state: Keyboard Maestro's trial length, because the vendor publishes only "a short trial period" and never a number — its 30-day clause is a refund window, not a trial — and AutoHotkey's minimum Windows version, which is not published anywhere in its docs. Where a vendor does not publish a detail, this page says so rather than inferring it.

1. Jarvis — The alternative for people whose complaint about Keyboard Maestro is the build step. Press Cmd+/ on macOS or Ctrl+/ on Windows and Linux and a floating bar opens over the app you are already in; you say what you want in plain language and, when the question needs it, Jarvis takes one screenshot of the active window so the answer is about that. It acts through 30+ OAuth connectors — Gmail, Outlook, Slack, Notion, Linear, GitHub, Google Calendar, Drive, Microsoft 365 — with sending, posting and deleting held behind your approval. Show Me draws a pointer on your screen to circle the exact control, so it can explain a step rather than only performing it. Nothing is defined in advance, which also means nothing breaks when an application changes its layout. Pricing: Free: $0 — 40 requests/week, plus a 7-day full Pro trial with no card. Pro: $16/month ($144/year billed annually). Unlimited: $32/month. Checked 25 August 2026 on getjarvis.eu/pricing. Platforms: macOS 12+ (Apple Silicon and Intel), Windows 10/11 x64, Linux x86_64 (AppImage, needs libfuse2). One account covers all three. Known limitation: It is not a macro engine and does not pretend to be one. There are no triggers, no scheduled or timed execution, no hotkey-to-macro assignment, no conditionals or loops you author, no clipboard or window-management actions, and no recorder. It will not run a twelve-step sequence unattended at 3am. It also needs a network, because inference is cloud-based and there is no offline mode, where Keyboard Maestro works with the Wi-Fi off. And a sentence is not deterministic: the same instruction can be interpreted slightly differently twice, which a macro never is. Pick Jarvis if: the task changes every time, or you want it explained rather than executed, and you would rather not maintain a macro library. 2. Keyboard Maestro (by Stairways Software) — Worth re-examining before you leave, because very little competes with it on depth. Its own site calls it "The Premier Mac Automation Software" and the model is simple: a macro is one or more triggers plus a series of actions executed in order. The editor is graphical — you add actions with a plus button and reorder them by dragging — and there is a recorder that generates actions by watching what you do, so scripting is optional rather than required. Where you want code, it will execute AppleScript, shell, JavaScript for Automation, JavaScript in Safari or Chrome, Swift, or an Automator workflow. Version 11.1.1, shipping continuously since the early 2000s. Pricing: US$36 plus applicable tax for a new licence, US$25 to upgrade from any previous version. A one-time purchase, explicitly not a subscription. Licensed per user, usable on up to five Macs. Purchases since 1 March 2023 received a free upgrade to version 11. There is a 30-day refund clause. Read from keyboardmaestro.com and its wiki, 25 August 2026. Platforms: macOS only — version 11 requires macOS 10.13 High Sierra or later, native on Apple Silicon. No Windows and no Linux build. Known limitation: No AI and no understanding of your screen. We searched the vendor's own wiki, which includes the user manual, on 25 August 2026 for artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, OpenAI, natural language, Apple Intelligence, Gemini and Claude, and every search returned nothing found. It does read the screen, but as classical OCR — its OCR Screen action uses Apple Text Recognition or Tesseract and its own documentation warns the text "may contain errors". Its actions named Prompt are GUI dialogs, not model prompts. And the real cost is the learning curve, not the US$36. Pick Keyboard Maestro (by Stairways Software) if: you are on a Mac and you want deterministic, offline, deeply capable automation for a one-time price, and you are willing to build it. 3. BetterTouchTool (by folivora.ai) — The gentler Mac answer, and the one to look at if the phrase that brought you here was assigning buttons to everyday actions. Its homepage describes it as letting you "customize trackpad gestures, the mouse, keyboard shortcuts, the menu bar, Stream Deck and more - then automate almost anything with chainable actions", with 600+ triggers and 600+ built-in actions. It has also grown AI: its documentation describes assistants for "chat, BTT configuration, automation, research, coding, and computer use" that "can inspect windows, use accessibility data, click, type, use menu bar commands, and verify results with screenshots", plus MCP servers becoming AI skills. Pricing: Standard License $15, described as receiving updates for 2 years and then usable forever. Lifetime License $25, receiving all updates while BetterTouchTool exists. One-time purchases via Paddle; the vendor notes the exact price depends on country and taxes. 45-day free trial, no account required. Also on Setapp. Read from folivora.ai/buy, 25 August 2026. Platforms: macOS only, requiring macOS 12 Monterey or later per its release notes. No Windows or Linux build. Known limitation: Its AI is bring-your-own-model — the documentation states plainly that "BTT does not provide the AI model service itself", so you choose a provider or a local model, supply credentials, and pay that provider on top of the licence. The trigger-and-action core is still a large surface to learn, even if a friendlier one than Keyboard Maestro's. And it is Mac-only, so it is no help to anyone who came here from Windows or Linux. Pick BetterTouchTool (by folivora.ai) if: you are on a Mac, you want gestures and buttons mapped to actions with less ceremony than Keyboard Maestro, and holding your own model key is fine. 4. Raycast — The lightest-touch option, because it arrives as a launcher you would install anyway and the automation is incidental. The free tier includes clipboard history, quicklinks, calculator, snippets and window management per raycast.com/pricing, plus the extension store. Pro adds Raycast AI, and the pricing page names "Screen Awareness, Memory, Profile, Bring Your Own Key (BYOK)" among its inclusions; the manual describes Screen Awareness as letting you "ask Raycast AI about whatever is in front of you" by capturing the focused window. It left beta on Windows on 25 August 2026 with version 2.0, and the currently distributed Windows build is v2.0.6.0. Pricing: Launcher free forever. Pro $10/month, or $8/month billed annually. Advanced AI add-on +$8/month. Teams Pro $15/user/month. Read from raycast.com/pricing, 25 August 2026. Platforms: Windows 10 21H2+ and Windows 11, and macOS — with a strict floor: its own manual quickstart states "macOS Tahoe and newer (Apple silicon)", which excludes Intel Macs. No Linux. An iOS app exists. Known limitation: It is not an automation engine. There is no macro recorder, no trigger system, no scheduled execution and nothing resembling Keyboard Maestro's flow control — what it has is commands and extensions. The macOS floor rules out a lot of hardware. The AI is Pro-only, and Screen Awareness is documented with macOS permissions specifically, so this page does not claim Windows parity for it. It cannot point at a control on your screen. Pick Raycast if: what you wanted from Keyboard Maestro was mostly quick access to things, and you would rather have a fast launcher with an AI attached than a macro library. 5. AutoHotkey — The answer for anyone whose real question was Keyboard Maestro but on Windows. Its site describes it as "a free, open-source scripting language for Windows that allows users to easily create small to complex scripts for all kinds of tasks such as: form fillers, auto-clicking, macros, etc." It is the closest thing Windows has to Keyboard Maestro's depth, and it is free. Current stable is v2.0.26, released 4 May 2026; the older v1.1 line is, in the project's own words, "not being maintained, but support is provided by community members". Pricing: Free. GPL-2.0, 13,010 stars, C++, last pushed 16 August 2026 — read from the GitHub REST API on 25 August 2026. No paid tier, no licence key, no subscription. Platforms: Windows only. We searched the entire v2 documentation tree on 25 August 2026 for Linux and macOS and found zero occurrences. The vendor publishes no explicit minimum Windows version, so this page does not state one. Known limitation: It is a programming language, and the difference between that and Keyboard Maestro's drag-and-drop editor is the whole story for a non-programmer. There is no visual action list and no recorder in the box. It has ImageSearch and PixelSearch, but those are exact-bitmap and exact-colour matchers with a numeric RGB tolerance — you pre-capture the reference image or know the hex value and hard-code the search rectangle. There is no OCR, no element identification and no AI: a full-text search of the v2 docs on 25 August 2026 returned zero matches for artificial intelligence, machine learning, LLM, ChatGPT, OpenAI or natural language. Pick AutoHotkey if: you are on Windows, you want Keyboard Maestro-class control for nothing, and writing code is something you are willing to do.

Why people switch: You want the result without authoring the steps; You want it to understand the screen, not match a bitmap; You are not on a Mac; You want it to explain a step, not only perform it.

Pick a competitor instead if: The macro has to run the same way every time — Then keep Keyboard Maestro, and this is not a close call. A macro that clicks the same coordinates in the same order will do that on the thousandth run, offline, with no account and no network. An assistant reasoning about a screenshot will occasionally read the screen differently. For a nightly export, a batch rename you audit later, or anything where variance is a defect rather than flexibility, determinism wins and Jarvis does not offer it. It has to fire on a schedule or a trigger you did not press — Jarvis has no triggers at all. It appears when you press the shortcut and stops when you stop — there is no timed execution, no application-launch trigger, no folder watcher and no unattended run. Keyboard Maestro and BetterTouchTool are both built around exactly that, and AutoHotkey scripts can sit resident indefinitely. If "when X happens, do Y" is the requirement, this ranking is not what you need. You want to pay once — Keyboard Maestro is US$36 once, usable on up to five of your own Macs, with US$25 upgrades every couple of years. BetterTouchTool is $15 or $25 once. AutoHotkey is free under GPL-2.0. Jarvis is $16 a month above 40 requests a week, which over three years is a great deal more money. If subscription is the objection rather than capability, the one-time purchases here are genuinely better value and we are not going to pretend otherwise. The machine is offline or locked down — Keyboard Maestro, AutoHotkey and BetterTouchTool's non-AI half all work with no internet at all. Jarvis does not: inference is cloud-based by design, there is no offline mode, no local model and no bring-your-own-key option below the Unlimited tier. On an air-gapped machine or a network that blocks outbound traffic, the one-time purchase works and the subscription does nothing.

What is the best Keyboard Maestro alternative in 2026? It depends which part you are replacing. If you want the outcome without authoring the macro, and help with the window in front of you, Jarvis (getjarvis.eu). If you want gestures and buttons mapped to actions on a Mac with less ceremony, BetterTouchTool at $15. If you mostly wanted fast access to things, Raycast, free as a launcher and $10/month for the AI. If you are on Windows and want comparable depth for nothing, AutoHotkey under GPL-2.0. And if you need deterministic, scheduled, offline Mac automation, Keyboard Maestro is still the best version of that and the honest advice is to keep it.

Can an AI replace Keyboard Maestro without scripting every step? For some jobs, yes, and it is worth being clear about which. Jarvis takes an instruction in plain language and acts through 30+ connected apps, so a one-off multi-step request needs no macro at all. What it cannot do is the thing Keyboard Maestro is uniquely good at: fire on a trigger you did not press, run on a schedule, execute identically every time, and work offline. Note also that Keyboard Maestro does not require scripting either — its editor is a visual action list with a recorder, and AppleScript or shell is optional. The real difference is authoring versus asking, not code versus no code.

How much does Keyboard Maestro cost? US$36 plus applicable tax for a new licence, and US$25 to upgrade from any previous version, read from keyboardmaestro.com on 25 August 2026. It is explicitly a one-time purchase and not a subscription; the licence is per user and covers up to five Macs. Purchases made since 1 March 2023 received a free upgrade to version 11, and the vendor publishes a 30-day refund clause. It also offers a free trial, but the vendor never states its length — only "a short trial period" — so this page does not quote a number, and the 30-day figure is a refund window rather than a trial.

Does Keyboard Maestro have AI? No. We searched the vendor's own wiki, which explicitly includes the user manual, on 25 August 2026 for artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, OpenAI, natural language, Apple Intelligence, Gemini and Claude, and every one returned nothing found. None of the documented actions carries an AI-related name. Two things are easy to misread: its OCR Screen action does read the screen, but through Apple Text Recognition or Tesseract, and its own documentation warns the text may contain errors; and its actions named Prompt are GUI input dialogs, not model prompts.

Is there a Keyboard Maestro equivalent for Windows? AutoHotkey is the closest, and it is free under GPL-2.0 with 13,010 stars and a current stable release of v2.0.26 from 4 May 2026. The trade is that it is a scripting language rather than a visual editor, so the floor is higher for a non-programmer. Microsoft's PowerToys suite covers some of the same ground for free, and Raycast now runs on Windows 10 21H2+ and Windows 11 following its 25 August 2026 general availability. Jarvis runs on Windows 10/11 x64 and replaces the ask-for-an-outcome half rather than the macro half.

What can replace Keyboard Maestro on Linux? Nothing we can verify as a direct equivalent, and it is more useful to say so than to name something that does not fit. Keyboard Maestro is macOS-only; AutoHotkey is Windows-only; BetterTouchTool is macOS-only. On Linux the honest automation answer remains shell scripting plus your desktop environment's own keyboard-shortcut system, and the launcher options are Wox, Ulauncher, Rofi and Albert — of which only Wox ships first-party AI. Jarvis runs on Linux x86_64 from an AppImage that needs libfuse2, and is an assistant rather than a macro engine.

What is the easiest Keyboard Maestro alternative for a beginner? For a Mac user who wants buttons and gestures mapped to everyday actions, BetterTouchTool has the gentler on-ramp and a 45-day trial with no account required, though 600+ triggers and 600+ actions is still a large surface. For someone who wants no configuration at all, Jarvis is a signed installer, two permissions granted once, and then a shortcut — there is nothing to define, so the first useful result comes in minutes rather than an afternoon. It is also the only option here that costs nothing to try beyond a free plan that continues indefinitely.

Can Jarvis do what Keyboard Maestro does? Partly, and in a different shape. Both act in real applications rather than only answering. Jarvis does the half Keyboard Maestro cannot: understand what is on the screen you are looking at, take an instruction in plain language, and point a cursor at the control you should click. Keyboard Maestro does the halves Jarvis cannot: fire on triggers and schedules, run identically every time, work offline, and reach deep into macOS with hundreds of purpose-built actions and flow control. Plenty of people run both, and that is a reasonable arrangement rather than a compromise.

Alternatives · Keyboard Maestro alternatives · Last updated August 25, 2026