Comparison of SSH clients

Further information: Secure shell

An SSH client is a software program which uses the secure shell protocol to connect to a remote computer. This article compares a selection of popular clients.

General

Name	Developer	Status	First release	Based on	License	Source available
cURL	Daniel Stenberg	Active	January, 1997	libssh2 [1]	MIT	Yes
eSSH Client	Ecode Software	Active	July, 2002		Proprietary	No
Dropbear [2]	Matt Johnston	Active	January, 2005		MIT	Yes
lsh	Niels Möller	Active	May 23, 1999 (0.1)		GPL	Yes
OpenSSH	The OpenBSD project	Active	December 1, 1999	ossh	BSD	Yes
PenguiNet [3]	Silicon Circus	Active	April 7, 2000	N/A	Proprietary	No
PuTTY	Simon Tatham	Active	January 1999		MIT	Yes
SFTPPlus	Pro:Atria Ltd	Active	2005	OpenSSH/PuTTY	Proprietary	No
SunSSH [4]	Open Solaris	Active	2001	OpenSSH 2.3	OpenSolaris License	Yes
Tera Term	TeraTerm Project	Active	2004	TeraTerm 2.3 (1994-1998)	BSD	Yes
WinSCP	Martin Prikryl	Active	2000	PuTTY	GPL	Yes

Platform

The operating systems or virtual machines the ssh clients are designed to run on without emulation; there are several possibilities:

• No indicates that it does not exist or was never released.

• Partial indicates that while it works, the client lacks important functionality compared to versions for other OSs but may still be under development.

• Beta indicates that while a version is fully functional and has been released, it is still in development (e.g. for stability).

• Yes indicates that it has been officially released in a fully functional, stable version.

• Dropped indicates that while the client works, new versions are no longer being released for the indicated OS; the number in parentheses is the last known stable version which was officially released for that OS.

• Included indicates that the client comes pre-packaged with or has been integrated into the operating system.

The list is not exhaustive, but rather reflects the most common platforms today.

Name	Mac OS X	Mac OS Classic	Windows	Cygwin	BSD	Linux	Solaris	Palm OS	Java	OpenVMS	Windows Mobile	IBM z/OS	AmigaOS	AIX	HPUX	iPhoneTemplate:Refun / iPod Touch
Dropbear	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	—	—	—	—	No	No	No	No
eSSH Client	Yes	No	Yes	—	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	—	—	—	—	No	No	No	No
JTA	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	Yes	—	—	—	No	No	No	No
lsh	Yes	No	No	No	PartialTemplate:Refun	Yes	Yes	No	—	—	—	—	No	No	No	No
OpenSSH	Included	No	YesTemplate:Refun	Included	Included	IncludedTemplate:Refun	Yes	No	—	Yes	—	Yes	Yes	YesTemplate:Refun	Yes	YesTemplate:Refun
PenguiNet	No	No	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
PuTTY	Partial	Partial	Yes	—	Yes	Yes		No	—	—	Yes	—	No	No	No	No
SFTPPlus	No	No	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes	No	—	—	—	—	No	No	No	No
Tera Term	No	No	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	—	—	—	—	No	—	No	No
WinSCP	No	No	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No

• ^ lsh supports only one BSD platform officially, FreeBSD.
• ^ The majority of Linux distributions have OpenSSH as an official package, but a few do not.
• ^ Openssh 3.4 was the first release included since AIX
• ^ Unless otherwise noted, iPhone refers to non-jailbroken devices.
• ^ [5]
• ^ Only for jailbroken devices.

Technical

Name	User interface	SSH1	SSH2	Additional protocols		Tunneling			Session MultiplexingTemplate:Refun	Kerberos	IPv6
				TELNET	rlogin	Port forwarding	SOCKSTemplate:Refun	VPNTemplate:Refun				Terminal	SFTP/SCP
Dropbear	command line	No	Yes	No	No	Yes	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
lsh	command line	No	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
OpenSSH	command line	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
PenguiNet	GUI	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	No
PuTTY	GUITemplate:Refun or command line	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	NoTemplate:Refun	Yes	Yes	YesTemplate:Refun
SFTPPlus	GUI or command line	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No		No		No	Yes
Tera Term	GUI	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	?	?	?	?	?	?
WinSCP	GUI or command line	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	No	No	Yes

• ^ The ability for the SSH client to establish a VPN, e.g. using TUN/TAP.
• ^ The ability for the SSH client to perform dynamic port forwarding by acting as a local SOCKS proxy.
• ^ The PuTTY developers provide a command line capable SSH client called PLINK.
• ^ Current development snapshots of PuTTY contain Kerberos support, which is planned for the next release. Also, there exist third-party patches that add Kerberos functionality to PuTTY. [6][7]
• ^ The PuTTY developers provide SCP and SFTP functionality as binaries for separate download.
• ^ SSH Tectia versions prior to 5.0 have SSH1 support; 5.0 and later do not support SSH1.
• ^ AES encryption only with third-party library.
• ^ Accelerating OpenSSH connections with ControlMaster.

Features

Name	Full keyboard mapping	Session tabs	ZMODEM transfers	Find text in buffer	Mouse input supportTemplate:Refun	Unicode support	URL Hyperlinking	Public key authentication	Smart card support	Hardware encryption	FIPS 140-2 Validation
OpenSSH	?	?	?	?	?	Yes	?	Yes	YesTemplate:Refun	Yes	No
PuTTY	No	NoTemplate:Refun	No	No	Yes	Yes	NoTemplate:Refun	Yes	NoTemplate:Refun	?	?
Tera Term	?	Yes	Yes	?	?	Yes	?	Yes	?	?	?

• ^ The ability to transmit mouse input to text mode applications such as Midnight Commander
• ^ OpenSSH needs to be patched to ask for the pin of the smartcard. If you don't want to patch OpenSSH you can use ssh-agent (the link is in french)
• ^ PuTTY needs patches for the smartcard http://www.opensc-project.org/scb/.
• ^ SecureCRT 5.1 and later uses a FIPS 140-2 validated cryptographic library.
• ^ PuTTY does not support directly, but with installing PuTTY Connection Manager session tabs support is available.
• ^ PuTTY does not support this but a branch of PuTTY named PuTTY Tray does.

See also

• Comparison of FTP client software

External links

• SSH for Java - Comparing Java clients
• SSHBlackbox - A component suite for software developers that lets you create your own full-featured SSH client and server software
• [8] - A Comparison of Free SSH and SCP Programs for Windows