Comparison of SSH clients

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For more details on this topic, see 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.

Contents

[edit] General

Name Developer Status First release Based on License Source available
AbsoluteTelnet [1] Brian Pence Active August, 1996 Proprietary no
cURL Daniel Stenberg Active January, 2007 libssh2 [2] MIT yes
eSSH Client Ecode Software Active July, 2002 Proprietary no
Dropbear [3] Matt Johnston Active January, 2005 MIT yes
IVT [4] BearStar Software Active 1998 PuTTY (for SSH-implementation) Proprietary no
JTA Matthias L. Jugel, Marcus Meissner  ? 1996 GPL yes
lsh Niels Möller Active May 23, 1999 (0.1) GPL yes
OpenSSH The OpenBSD project Active December 1, 1999 ossh BSD yes
PenguiNet [5] 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 yes
SSH Tectia Client SSH Communications Security Active 1995 Proprietary yes
Tera Term TeraTerm Project Active 2004 TeraTerm 2.3 (1994-1998) BSD yes
WinSCP Martin Prikryl Active 2000 PuTTY GPL yes
Reflection [6] (formerly F-Secure SSH) Attachmate Corp. Active  ? Proprietary no

[edit] 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
AbsoluteTelnet No No Yes N/A No No No No N/A N/A N/A N/A No
Dropbear Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No N/A N/A N/A N/A No
eSSH Client Yes No Yes N/A Yes Yes Yes No N/A N/A N/A N/A No
IVT No No Yes No No No No No No No No No No
JTA N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A Yes N/A N/A N/A No
lsh Yes No No No Partial† Yes Yes No N/A N/A N/A N/A No
OpenSSH Included No No Included Included Included† Yes No N/A Yes N/A N/A Yes
PenguiNet No No Yes No No No No No No No No No No
PuTTY Partial Partial Yes N/A Yes Yes No N/A N/A Yes N/A No
SFTPPlus No No Yes No No Yes Yes No N/A N/A N/A N/A No
SSH Tectia Client No No Yes No No Yes Yes No N/A N/A N/A N/A No
Tera Term No No Yes No No No No No N/A N/A N/A N/A No
WinSCP No No Yes 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.

[edit] Technical

Name User interface SSH1 SSH2 Additional protocols Tunneling Session
Multiplexing†		 Kerberos IPv6
TELNET rlogin Port
forwarding		 SOCKS† VPN† Terminal SFTP/SCP
AbsoluteTelnet GUI Yes Yes Yes No Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
IVT GUI (multi-session,
single-window)		 No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Yes No No
lsh command line No Yes No No Yes No No Yes Yes No
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 GUI† or command line Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes† Yes
SFTPPlus GUI or command line Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes[citation needed] Yes[citation needed] No No Yes No
SSH Tectia Client command line Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
WinSCP GUI or command line Yes Yes No No No No No No Yes No Yes 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.
  • ^  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.

[edit] Features

Name Smart card support Hardware encryption FIPS 140-2 Validation
AbsoluteTelnet Yes No
OpenSSH Yes Yes No
PuTTY No  ?  ?

[edit] See also

[edit] 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
  • [7] - A Comparison of Free SSH and SCP Programs for Windows