Twitter Client Memory Usage

I run a Twitter client in the background permanently, and I started to wonder how much memory it used.  I heard TweetDeck uses a lot of memory, so I decided to compare the top Mac clients.

I set the clients up with the same account which has these stats: 140 following, 158 followers, 744 updates.

Each of the clients was running for 12 hours.

EventBox

EventBox currently costs $15 and is made by The Cosmic Machine LLP based in England.  I use it as my main Twitter client.  It also works with Facebook, Flickr, Google Reader, feeds, and Reddit.

Memory usage: 78.77 MB

CPU: 0.1%

Conclusion: EventBox is safe to leave in the background.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is free and uses Adobe Air.  If you haven’t tried it before, it has a rich set of features that create a dashboard-like overview of your Twitter network and related activity.

Memory usage: 115.95 MB

CPU: 2.0%

Conclusion: CPU occasionally spiked and memory usage seemed to creep up over time, but TweetDeck is currently more stable than it has been.

Twhirl

I set up Twhirl with one account.  Like TweetDeck it uses Adobe’s Air, so it has a larger footprint than native Mac software like EventBox.

Memory usage: 103.70 MB

CPU: 2.8-8%

Conclusion: Twhirl is relatively well behaved.  I didn’t find the memory usage to spiral out of control, but the CPU usage isn’t as good as other clients.

Twitterific

Twitterific is incredibly popular and has been around for a long time.  It’s a solid and simple client that hasn’t crashed for me since I bought it.

Memory usage: 14.99 MB

CPU: 0%

Conclusion: The best performing client that I’ve found.

Conclusion

EventBox is the most sophisticated client here, yet it performs incredibly well.  Twitterific uses the least resources.  When looking for software that you’re likely to leave running in the background, get a native client rather than Air.