Comparison

Bartender 5 or Thaw?

Bartender if you want the most mature solution. Thaw if you want free + open source.

Tool A

Bartender 5

Competitor

Tool B

Thaw

Take back control of your macOS menu bar: hide, organize, customize.

Criterion by criterion

Criterion by criterion
Criterion	Bartender 5	Thaw
In my stack	No, competitor	Yes
My rating	No tool page on my site	4.5 out of 5
What it does better	More polished interface, Mac App Store, long-standing support, better documentation	Actively maintained fork of Ice with bug fixes and new features
What it does worse	Paid ($18 once + paid updates), controversy over the change of owner	Requires macOS 26+: not compatible with earlier versions
Entry price	No tool page on my site	€0
Plan I would pick	No tool page on my site	Thaw · €0
Works with	No tool page on my site	macOS
Where the opinion comes from	Compared from my Thaw review	Based on my Thaw review

Verdict

Bartender if you want the most mature solution. Thaw if you want free + open source.

On Bartender 5, written from my Thaw review