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- FTP is the abbreviation for File Transfer Protocol, and an FTP client is a piece of software that helps with this transfer. When a file is being transferred from one system to another, then the donor is called the host server, and the receiver is the client.
- FileZilla is a free FTP solution offered as an FTP client for multiple platforms and as an FTP servers for Windows OS. Remote file editing is available for FTP, FTPS and SFTP, also you can move them around effortlessly with the help of the drag-and-drop feature.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is tailor-made for quickly moving large digital files between a remote computer acting as an FTP server and an FTP client that lets you access and upload those files.
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Best SSH clients for Windows | Price | License | Platforms |
---|---|---|---|
KiTTY | Free | - | - |
PuTTY | Free | - | - |
ZOC Terminal | $79.99 | - | - |
Shell NGN - Web Based SSH Client | $5.90 | - | - |
SSH of Windows' Linux subsystem | Free | - | - |
KiTTY
Sessions filter Shortcuts for pre-defined command The session launcher Automatic logon script URL hyperlinks Running a locally saved script on a remote session Send to tray Transparency Quick start of a duplicate session SSH Handler: Internet Explorer integration pscp.exe and WinSCP integration New command-line options See More
Each session holds its own configuration of all features. This means that if one wants to change a configuration common to all sessions (say, the terminal font), it has to be changed in each stored session separately. A better solution would be to have a default configuration and store only the changed elements for each session (both configurations would be merged, with e priority on the specific one). See More
This one worked out of the box with my server deployed to UpCloud provider See More
Support start-up sessions which allow you to specify the window/tab layout, working directories, and programs to run on startup. See More
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Supports True Color, so software like Vim can display a really nice pallet. See More
Uses Unicode for the best character compatibility. See More
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PuTTY
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Anyway, you can use 'PuTTYgen' to generate a key pair, then use 'Pageant' to do a password-less SSH remote login. See More
absolutly horrible if you come from linux. See More
PuTTY is one of the oldest and most popular clients. It has earned the trust of a great number of users over a long period by being reliable, offering useful features and helpful support. It got into the 15 Essential Open Source Tools for Windows Admins list by InfoWorld. See More
It is JUST an SSH client. There are many other options with built in X-servers, Multitabbing, etc. See More
Full source available. Compile and modify it yourself. See More
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Its tedious to set up logging and tracing (e.g. for serial connections). See More
Doesn't require much resources (memory and hard-disk). Can even be run on a system by just downloading without install. See More
If you want to change a setting for all your connections, you'd have to do it individually. See More
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ZOC Terminal
The user interface is modern and up to date. See More
It has so many options that it's hard to find the one you need. See More
use it already for many years... See More
MacOS and Windows version share the same config files (even over Dropbox). See More
They don't have a free version, but you can download it and check it out for 30 days. See More
Extremely reliabe. Does the job. See More
Once you get the hang of scripting, it saves a lot of time (more than invested in learning). See More
Without an integrated x server , you must download a separate x server, configure it and ensure it is running everytime you need to use a such a GUI application. See More
First rate, rock solid performer with excellent stability and security and a full suite of emulations. I have been using ZOC since Version 1.0 and have never had a problem. See More
ZOC Terminal offers a thumbnail view of all session where you can type commands to all sessions at and see all the results at once. See More
And lack of information online. It's hard to see the cursor and find how to change cursor style in settings. The color theme is the same story. See More
Regular updates See More
Their website has a description on how to make a portable installation. See More
Free Sftp Client Windows 10
Originally developed for OS/2 (as Zap-O-Comm), Zoc is currently available for Windows and Macintosh. See More
Lets you drag files into the terminal window to send them to the server. Has a download function where you just type the name of the file to receive. See More
Offers a thumbnail view of all sessions in thumbnails and type commands to all sessions at the same time. See More
Tabbed sessions mean that multiple items can be contained within a single window and can be easily navigated by the user. See More
Feature to search for text bits in the data stream and highlight them with color/background. See More
Can transfer files through a terminal session without launching another window or application. Can even drag-drop files into the terminal to transfer. See More
Zoc allows for every UI component except the title bar to be hidden. All features are accessible through the context menu. See More
Zoc provides complete automation of the client using its macro scripting. See More
It offers some emulations (like IBM 3270 or i/Series 5250) that are only available on macOS in old and/or bare bones implementations. Others, like QNX, are not available at all. See More
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In addition to telnet, ssh, and rlogin, ZOC supports direct serial connections, modem dialing, and named pipes. See More
It's an actual terminal emulator (in the sense that it emulates a terminal) and not just a local console window app. See More
You can map/redefine every key (including combinations with Ctr, Alt, etc.) to do anything (send text, start scripts, emulate key, ...) See More
Shell NGN - Web Based SSH Client
AllPros5
Cons Since this tool is cloud-based, there's no need to download and install anything. You can simpy run it from the browser. See More
Not enough options to trim it to your needs. See More
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It's ok for a quick session, but compared to native apps it's output is slow. See More
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SSH of Windows' Linux subsystem
All you have to do is go to the Microsoft store, choose a Linux distro you like, and install the client for free. See More
For example running Midnight commander (MC) makes terminal blinking. See More
Great for little things like run some manual scripts and explore some Linux strengths. But does not support backgroud jobs with the session open, or jobs running on crontab, etc... It's a great step from Microsoft (good one), but it is yet, limited. They must improve the Linux Subsystem capabilities. Windows 10 Pro WSL also does not run on Virtual Machines. See More
OpenSSH is the reference for all ssh clients. See More
Any other SSH client will render the remote server at whatever size the local client window is. The built-in SSH client on Windows, however, forces you to use a standard size, and it's small enough to cause problems. See More
Uses all relevant Linux ssh commands as normal. See More
Crontab only runs on ROOT, and it needs Windows to stay open. If you close it, you will kill the crontab. Some background jobs don't run on Windows WSL. See More
It is much easier and more convenient than dealing with a dual boot Linux installation. See More
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MobaXterm
In this one app, you get a combination of network tools, an embedded X server, security tools, a variety of plugins and add-ons, and more. Moreover, if you want to get this software for personal use, it comes for free. See More
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I Love it! Just showed it off to a client again today See More
It's built in XServer, for running remote GUI apps locally. See More
Every part looks a bit different which can be confusing. See More
This is an mazing program! Wish there was a Mac version! See More
With MobaXterm, there's no fiddling with multiple apps: simply connect and everything is available. See More
A packet of a bunch of network-related things. The ssh client is just one component of many (among X11, RDP, SSH server and others), and not a very good one. See More
Manipulate and edit remote files in the file browser. See More
If you use MobaXterm at work, they hope you will pay for it. This isn't horrifying, but it's not providing any new features in Linux to warrant the outlay. Its integration with Putty in Windows as an X client may make it worth the funds. See More
MobaXterm can connect to practically anything. See More
If you split a screen within a tab, you have to go back to single screen before you can switch to another tab. See More
In case you need X11 forwarding, MobaXterm has an integrated X server. See More
MobaXterm can have some occasional performance issues. These happen rarely but it's worth mentioning that they exist, especially since this is a paid tool. See More
And you can install conda for additional package management. See More
It's an only Windows software, it will not work on any other platform. Misses the Mac OSX, Linux, Android, and iOS. See More
Multiple terminals can either be in tabs or split horizontally or vertically. See More
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You can edit remote files via ssh and sftp. See More
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The Personal edition is free to use. See More
Very practical when you are on a client's machine - you can run it off a USB stick or directly from the download without installing anything See More
Mouse wheel can be used for scrolling in most programs, such as less, vim, nano, etc. See More
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It has built-in import/export facilities. It can import existing session from putty, superputty, scrt, exceed, mremote, puttycm. See More
Integrates perfectly with the Windows Subsystem for Linux. Out of the box it offers a shell to that system. See More
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Bitvise SSH Client
The client comes with built-in SFTP window to easily move files between the client and the server. See More
Why not have a panel to show saved profiles that the user can easily to open sessions? See More
Has lots of features and always works :) See More
The SSH client software is free without any limitations. See More
windows is best on gui, so bitvise is befited See More
Bitvise is one of the few SSH clients that offers all features free for all types of users, including organizations. At the same time, there are no compromises in terms of functionality. It has an advanced GUI, corporation-wide single sign-on, learning resources including guides and FAQs, and other features. See More
Well been using for 3 years after being a filezilla user from 4 years just got tired of it (FZ) and it is a great SFTP client which also allows to use SSH in a simple way. See More
Profiles can be used to save connection information and connection specific settings. See More
ssh of Cygwin
AllPros1
ConsSee More
So you can have handy UI with tabs and other features. (For tab-like experience there is also GNU screen). See More
SecureCRT
AllPros2
Cons Paid product. Some nice additional Cygwin type features and server version are integrated, but for most users the feature set probably does add enough value for a paid only client. See More
SecureCRT has strong data encryption and secure authentication through the support of password and public keys. See More
Has a Python API to control most aspects of the terminal and sessions. Scripts can be bound to buttons, menu items, and keyboard shortcuts. See More
SuperPuTTY
AllPros5
Cons SuperPuTTY is a wrapper available for PuTTY, not a standalone program, therefore you need to have a PuTTY installation before you can use SuperPuTTY. See More
By setting up certain shortcuts you can quickly bring up your sessions, select one by typing out the first letters, return-selecting it and cycle through your tabs. See More
Dynamic placement of tabs side-by-side vertically or horizontally (similar to IDEs like Eclipse/Visual Studio). This is an upgrade of the original PuTTY, which lacks this feature. See More
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Since it uses PuTTY underneath you can create and configure profiles/sessions there which you can reuse in SuperPuTTY and apply to connection in any fashion you like. See More
Open source and hosted on Github. See More
Terminus
This helps the community to move software forward and to make it even better. See More
It's huge. The amount of resources it consumes is not justifiable. See More
It's what I always wanted Hyper to be. See More
License:MIT
A lot of things can be easily configured, e.g. color theme, size, window frame behavior, tab location, cursor style, hotkeys, etc. See More
$9.99 monthly, or $59.99 a year See More
It's only 64-bit machines See More
Even the question was '...for Windows', it's nice if you can use your tools over different platforms. See More
The Windows installer errors out and the portable version hangs after you have made config changes and it wants to restart to apply them. The fact that it's electron based may be contributing to these issues. See More
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Terminus is a free and open source software with clean and modern UI, as opposed to numerous proprietary SSH clients out there with an outdated and unintuitive interface. See More
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Hyper development has basically stalled out. See More
Even the question was '...for Windows', it's nice if you can use your tools over different platforms. See More
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WinSCP
AllPros8
Cons Does not support shell access (only file transfer). Good software indeed, but not a good match for this question. See More
WinSCP has comprehensive and detailed documentation on their website which explains everything from installation to configuration, using all the tools, troubleshooting, and dealing with the most common errors. See More
WinSCP is more geared towards FTP tasks. See More
Supports SSH File Transfer Protocol and legacy Secure Copy Protocol allowing you to copy files securely. See More
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In new versions also supports WebDav. See More
It has very good compatibility with the other tools of this segment (e.g. PuTTY). See More
No Installation required. See More
WinSSHTerm
AllPros10
Cons One of the best ssh client to connect many server. See More
You need to install PuTTY, WinSCP, Pagent, etc. to get the full functionality of the tool. This is basically just a nice GUI for those tools. See More
The open source tool 'Migrate2WinSSHTerm' is available to help migrating from other SSH clients to WinSSHTerm. See More
You can use WinSSHTerm as a productivity booster for PuTTY/KiTTY, which allows you to have a multi-tab layout, customizable interface, keyboard shortcuts, as well as many others free and some premium features. See More
A shared connections file can be loaded by multiple users. It can be customized by using variables. See More
Set different background colors for environments like PROD, STAGE, DEV. See More
The user can start a WinSCP session inside WinSSHTerm, without the need to duplicate the session in WinSCP. See More
WinSSHTerm is free for anyone to use. See More
Keyboard shortcuts are especially valuable for professionals. See More
The user can run WinSSHTerm from a USB drive on different computers. See More
There is easy, automatic integration with X Server and starts/stops can take place with the launch/exit of WinSSHTerm. See More
Xshell 6
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The subscription costs $89 per year. See More
too expensive~~!!! See More
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Any portable version present is wrapper. It moves files from portable folder to appdata and backward, which often cause dataloss See More
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Xshell 6 caters to enterprises with features such as multi-tab UI, dynamic port forwarding, scripting support, support for ASCII as well as non-ASCII characters, etc. See More
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Channel monitoring and dynamic port forwarding. See More
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Chrome SSH Extension
AllPros2
Cons Easy to add and save connections. Once saved, just double click connections that you want to use, then off you go with your thing! See More
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Despite being a browser extension, you can use the SSH App without Internet connection. See More
Sollar PuTTY
AllPros1
Cons In additional to regular PuTTY features you get multi-tab interface, auto-login, quick access to recent sessions, integration of Windows Search, and other useful features. See More
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OpenSSH
FileZilla
AllPros4
ConsSpecs FileZilla is free open-source software distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License free of charge. Basically this means that everyone, including corporate entities, can use FileZilla, including but not limited to private, educational and commercial use. See More
Doesn't encrypt saved passwords. See More
Platforms:Windows
FileZilla Howto. See More
In addition to Windows, FileZilla client is available for Unix, OSX and Linux. See More
FileZilla Server is a server that supports FTP and FTP over SSL/TLS which provides secure encrypted connections to the server. Note that SFTP and FTPS are different things, FTPS is simpler in use, SFTP needs Secure Shell. More information. See More
Poderosa
Poderosa developers take it seriously for users to get pleasure from using their software. You can get a multi-tab view, customizable UI down to the text cursor animation, code autocomplete based on your command history. If you're a Macbook user, you can use the Touch bar with Poderosa. See More
Termius (formerly ServerAuditor)
AllPros6
ConsSpecsSee More
See More
Platforms:Windows Linux Mac IOS Android
Termius is a great client if you intend to use it on several devices. It is vailable for Android, iOS, Windows, Linux and Mac OSX. It is well-integrated for mobile platforms, with swipe gesture support, useful hotkeys and key combinations, as well as the possibility to use it with and external keyboard. See More
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Continue workingA few months ago we decided to run a comprehensive speed test of the best file transfer clients for macOS. During this process, we made some observations which allowed us to increase the file transfer speed of ForkLift even more. In this blog post, we’ll tell you what changes we’ve made to make ForkLift faster, and we’ll reveal the results of our speed test.
ForkLift is a file manager and a file transfer tool for Mac supporting a wide variety of file transfer protocols. With ForkLift – among many other things – you can copy, move or delete files on your Mac locally and you can also connect to remote servers to upload, download or delete files. A lot of people have to connect to remote servers or cloud storages to transfer files on a daily basis, for example:
- Web developers
- Web designers
- System administrators to move files to and from servers and even edit them remotely
- Photographers to back up their photos to Amazon S3 or other providers
- Bloggers to upload files to WordPress or other platforms
- Everyday users who back up or store data on a NAS (Network Attached Storage), Google Drive or Dropbox
Nobody wants to spend too much time moving files from one place to another. This is especially true when the actual work can only begin after the files have been transferred. That’s why performance is one of the most important factors of file transfer apps.
Why we compared the best file transfer clients
Because it’s important how fast you can transfer files, we have always monitored ForkLift’s uploading and downloading capabilities, but we hadn’t conducted a comprehensive speed test comparing ForkLift to several other top file transfer clients. We knew that some of our competitors were also paying a lot of attention to the upload and download speed of their apps. Some of them even claimed to be the fastest file transfer client on the market. We wanted to find out how fast these file transfer clients actually were and where ForkLift ranked among them.
What started out as a comprehensive speed test, turned into a series of revisiting and rewriting of some of the file transfer frameworks we use in ForkLift. Thanks to these changes, ForkLift has become an even faster file transfer tool.
In the next few paragraphs I’ll explain what and why we have changed during the testing process. If you want to go straight to the speed test, just click here.
Transferring files
Before I tell you how one file transfer client can be faster than the other, let me explain how transferring files works. You might better understand the process by imagining it like eating at a restaurant. Eating at a restaurant has its rules, just as the different file transfer protocols have their own rules. In a restaurant, you take a seat, wait for the waiter, order a drink, go over the menu and then you order your meal. When you have finished your meal, you have to wait for the waiter to clear the table and then you can ask for the bill, and you can only leave after you have paid. Transferring the file equals the consumption of the food, everything before and after the meal is what we call the overhead. In the case of the file transfer, the overhead is the indirect computation and communication time that is required to perform the file transfer. It takes time to build up, to handle and to end the communication with the remote server just as ordering and paying at the restaurant take time.
Transferring small files is like ordering peas one by one at the restaurant. You have to make the same routine as described above but all you will get at a time is a single pea. Because the pea is so small, you can eat it very fast, but if you want to eat more peas, first you have to pay for the first pea and only after that can you order a new one. When you are transferring small files, the transferring itself takes almost no time, just as eating a pea, but the computation and communication time is the same as with big files. The time spent with “everything else” compared to the time spent with the actual transfer is too big, the overhead becomes significant. But luckily, we can solve this problem. You can finish your meal faster if more than just one waiter is serving you. That way you don’t have to wait for the waiter to return from the kitchen because there are more waiters attending to you simultaneously. Sending in more waiters to serve you is like opening new threads to transfer files. Multiple threads can transfer files simultaneously just as multiple waiters can serve you simultaneously.
When you use more threads, you can transfer more data at the same time, and your transfer becomes quicker. That’s why multithreading can have a big impact on the transfer speed and time. The difference in transfer time gets even more significant when you are transferring a lot of small files.
Because we at Binarynights have always paid a lot of attention to the upload speed, Forklift has handled file transfers multi-threaded ever since it first came out in 2007. The way how the multi-threaded file transfer was implemented in ForkLift made it already very fast and one of the fastest clients, but there was still some room for improvement. During our tests, we found ways to make the file transfers with ForkLift via SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) and Amazon S3 (Amazon Simple Storage Service) even faster, and we also changed the way how ForkLift was deleting files.
Improving multithreading in our SFTP Client
During testing the SFTP transfers, we noticed that even though ForkLift would have been able to upload faster, the CPU on the server-side became a bottleneck limiting the upload performance and increasing the upload time. Keeping the example of the restaurant, this meant that there were several waiters trying to attend to you at the restaurant, but they could only use a single door to enter and exit the kitchen. They were standing in each other’s way and weren’t able to serve you as fast as they could have. ForkLift was trying to open multiple threads but because of the way how the software on the server-side works the server handled these threads as a single thread. The server-side only used one CPU to manage the threads and it reached its limits. In our test, out of the four CPUs available, only one CPU was handling the requests running at 100% while the other three CPUs weren’t involved in the upload process.Theoretically, all four CPUs should have taken part in the process to speed up the file transfer, but because of the implementation of the protocol on the server-side, this wasn’t happening. Realizing this, we’ve made some changes to the way how ForkLift was managing SFTP connections. Now, when we want ForkLift to open a new thread via SFTP, we force it to open a new connection. Making new connections is like opening more doors between the dining room and the kitchen of the restaurant so that the waiters don’t have to use the same door anymore to enter and exit. With this modification, we force the server to use multithreading the way it is supposed to. With this change, ForkLift uses the resources of the server more efficiently making the file transfer via SFTP faster.
A faster Amazon S3 Client with S3 multipart upload
We’ve also made some big changes to our Amazon S3 transfer tool. First of all, we’ve completely rewritten the Amazon S3 framework we used before. The main reason for writing our own Amazon S3 framework was that we wanted to enable connections to other Amazon S3 based cloud storage services as well. Before, you could only connect to s3.amazonaws.com: Amazon’s own cloud storage service. But there are more and more online storage service providers, which have implemented the Amazon S3 protocol. Wasabi and DigitalOcean are two notable S3-compatible cloud storage providers. With Forklift, from now on you can connect to Wasabi and DigitalOcean and any cloud storage provider which uses the Amazon S3 protocol.
Alone the rewriting of the framework made ForkLift faster than before, but we’ve gone one step further. To make transferring files even faster, we have also implemented the S3 multipart upload of big files.
When you connect to your Amazon S3 storage, the throughput of that connection is limited by Amazon. When you are uploading big files, this limitation can make your upload time significantly longer. But with the multipart upload of big files, Amazon also offers a way around this limitation. During the multipart upload, the large files are split into multiple parts, and these parts get uploaded using more connections in parallel. The throughput of each connection is limited, but when we open more connections, we can increase the combined throughput significantly. After all the parts have been uploaded using the multiple connections, the large file gets reconstructed from the parts. This way, the file can be uploaded much faster. With these implementations ForkLift uses the given means and resources more efficiently making the upload of big files faster.
In our speed test, we compared the big file upload performances of the tested Amazon S3 tools by uploading a 1 GB file to an Amazon S3 Bucket.
The implementation of the multipart upload has made the upload of the 1 GB file with ForkLift more than twice as fast as before, reducing the upload time from 92 seconds to just 40 seconds. According to our Amazon S3 tests, the implementation of the S3 multipart upload in ForkLift can make uploads of big files even up to 5 times as fast as before.
Deleting files on remote servers
ForkLift was the fastest file transfer client to delete files in almost all of the tested scenarios even during our initial testing. The reason for this is that ForkLift uses multiple threads not only to upload and download but also to delete files. Even though ForkLift was already the fastest client to delete files on remote servers except for one tested scenario, we’ve made some changes to it to make deletions even faster.
Deleting files is a simpler process than uploading or downloading. When you are deleting, the size of the file doesn’t influence how long the process takes. Deleting a huge file doesn’t take longer than deleting a small file. In previous versions of ForkLift when you hit delete, ForkLift first started to calculate how much time it would take to delete the files. That was necessary to generate the progress bar so you could follow the deletion process in the activity display. In a lot of cases, the time you had to wait just for this information was longer than the deletion part which followed the calculation. Because of this, we have decided to start the computation and the deletion at the same time. As a result, deleting files got even faster. Now, in most situations, the deletion process takes around the same amount of time as the calculation alone took in previous versions. The only drawback of this method is that in most cases ForkLift deletes the files so quickly that there is no time to generate the progress bar. When the deletion part takes longer than the computation part, the progress bar will be generated during the deleting process. We’ve opted for an even faster deletion rather than the progress bar.
Now, that you know all about what and why we have changed in ForkLift during the testing process, let’s see how well the different file transfer tools performed on our test.
Looking for the fastest FTP tool
In our test we compared the latest versions of five advanced file transfer clients for macOS:
- Cyberduck 6.6.2
- FileZilla Pro 3.34.0
- ForkLift 3.2.3
- Transmit 5.1.4
- Yummy FTP Pro 2.0.5
File transfer clients are often called FTP clients even though the most established file transfer tools support a much wider variety of protocols than just FTP. Maybe because of its name (File Transfer Protocol), a lot of people still associate file transfer with FTP and call file transfer tools FTP tools. Out of the ten protocols supported by ForkLift we’ve tested these four protocols:
- FTP and SFTP because these two are still the most used protocols and
- Amazon S3 and WebDAV HTTPS because these are becoming more and more popular
We tested five tasks with every tool using each protocol. We:
- uploaded a big file (1 or 5 GB depending on the protocol)
- downloaded a big file (1 or 5 GB depending on the protocol)
- uploaded 16471 small files (with a combined size of 264.8 MB)
- downloaded 16471 small files (with a combined size of 264.8 MB)
- deleted 16471 smallfiles (with a combined size of 264.8 MB)
We repeated each task 3 times with each tool and compared the best times between them.
Testing environment
To conduct our tests we used the following testing environment:
- MacBook Pro 2016 15″ with Touch Bar running macOS 10.13.5
- Satechi USB-C Adapter with Gigabit Ethernet port
- Server: Synology DS1517+ with four Samsung 850 Evo Basic 2TB SSDs in RAID10 and Synology E10G17-F2 10 GbE SFP+ Adapter
- Switch: Netgear ProSafe XS708T connected to Synology NAS via SFP+ cables
At the beginning of our testing process, we spent a lot of time figuring out how we should set up the most objective testing environment to guarantee the same conditions for every tool and to give them the same chance to perform at their absolute best.
To test FTP, SFTP and WebDAV over HTTPS we used our own local area network. There were no other processes running at the same time using and taking away bandwidth. We restarted the Synology NAS regularly to delete the cache. Since the Amazon S3 protocol can only be tested over the internet, we needed to find the off-peak time periods during which the Amazon S3 server/network usage was low. We tested every Amazon S3 tool in the same off-peak time period, late at night. We connected to an Amazon S3 Bucket in the Frankfurt Region because that region is the closest to our office.
Client setup
We tried to use the same setup in each tool. Since ForkLift uses five simultaneous transfers at the same time as default, this was what we tried to use in all other transfer clients too. In Cyberduck you can’t change the number of the simultaneous transfers, so we had to stick to its default settings. In FileZilla, we raised the number of simultaneous file transfers from the default two to five but FileZilla wasn’t able to operate well like that at all. When we used five or four simultaneous transfers at the same time in FileZilla, the file transfers kept getting interrupted or the app froze or crashed. We figured out that the highest number of simultaneous transfers FileZilla could handle was three, so we used that setting during our tests.
The best FTP clients for Mac compared
The most balanced results of the entire series of tests came from uploading and downloading the 5 GB file via FTP.
There was almost no difference between the upload and download times using FTP. Four out of the five clients needed the same amount of time to finish, and the remaining fifth client finished 1 second later in both scenarios. All the clients delivered basically the same performance transferring the big file.
On the other hand, we observed big differences between the FTP clients when we were working with small files.
Uploading the 16471 small files took both ForkLift and Yummy FTP 14 seconds and Cyberduck 16 seconds. The fastest clients (ForkLift and Yummy FTP) were uploading 1.86 times as fast as Transmit, the third and 4.64 times as fast as Filezilla, the slowest FTP client.
ForkLift was the fastest to download the same small files, it finished the task within 16 seconds and Yummy FTP, which came in second, was short by just 2 seconds. ForkLift downloaded the files 2.67 times as fast as Transmit, the third fastest and 5.63 times as fast as FileZilla, the slowest one.
ForkLift was also the fastest FTP client to delete the small files. ForkLift needed 13 seconds to finish the deletion which is almost half the execution time of Transmit, the second and almost third the execution time of FileZilla, the slowest FTP app.
When we add up the times which were required to complete all five operations, we see that ForkLift was the fastest FTP client in our test finishing in 2 minutes and 10 seconds.
FTP | ForkLift 3.2.3 | Yummy FTP Pro 2.0.5 | Transmit 5.1.4 | Cyberduck 6.6.2 | FileZilla Pro 3.34.0 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Combined time | 2m 10s | 2m 28s | 3m 1s | 3m 32s | 4m 40s |
Comb. time ratio | 1.00 | 1.14 | 1.39 | 1.63 | 2.15 |
We compared the combined execution times of each software to the combined execution time of the fastest tool. Because ForkLift was the fastest to finish all five tasks using FTP, its time ratio is 1.00. ForkLift was 1.14 times as fast as Yummy FTP, the second and 1.39 times as fast as Transmit, the third and more than twice as fast as FileZilla, the slowest FTP software in this test.
Show/Hide Table of FTP ComparisonFTP | ||||||
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File Operation | Test | ForkLift 3.2.3 | Transmit 5.1.4 | Cyberduck 6.6.2 | FileZilla Pro 3.34.0 | Yummy FTP Pro 2.0.5 |
Upload (5GB file) | #1 | 0m 44s | 0m 45s | 0m 44s | 0m 45s | 0m 44s |
#2 | 0m 44s | 0m 45s | 0m 44s | 0m 45s | 0m 45s | |
#3 | 0m 45s | 0m 44s | 0m 44s | 0m 46s | 0m 45s | |
Best | 44s | 44s | 44s | 45s | 44s | |
Download (5GB file) | #1 | 0m 43s | 0m 44s | 0m 43s | 0m 43s | 0m 44s |
#2 | 0m 43s | 0m 44s | 0m 43s | 0m 43s | 0m 43s | |
#3 | 0m 44s | 0m 44s | 0m 43s | 0m 43s | 0m 43s | |
Best | 43s | 44s | 43s | 43s | 43s | |
Upload (16471 items – 264,8MB) | #1 | 0m 14s | 0m 27s | 0m 16s | 1m 10s | 0m 14s |
#2 | 0m 15s | 0m 26s | 0m 18s | 1m 5s | 0m 16s | |
#3 | 0m 14s | 0m 27s | 0m 16s | 1m 11s | 0m 14s | |
Best | 14s | 26s | 16s | 65s | 14s | |
Download (16471 items – 264,8MB) | #1 | 0m 16s | 0m 48s | 1m 31s | 1m 33s | 0m 20s |
#2 | 0m 17s | 0m 48s | 1m 24s | 1m 30s | 0m 18s | |
#3 | 0m 17s | 0m 43s | 1m 27s | 1m 31s | 0m 18s | |
Best | 16s | 43s | 84s | 90s | 18s | |
Delete (16471 items – 264,8MB) | #1 | 0m 15s | 0m 27s | 0m 28s | 0m 37s | 0m 29s |
#2 | 0m 13s | 0m 24s | 0m 25s | 0m 38s | 0m 30s | |
#3 | 0m 13s | 0m 25s | 0m 26s | 0m 38s | 0m 30s | |
Best | 13s | 24s | 25s | 37s | 29s |
The best SFTP clients for Mac compared
Comparing the SFTP clients uploading and downloading a big file, delivered similar results compared to the test of the FTP clients with one exception.
Using SFTP, there was also almost no difference between four out of the five clients but this time the transfer times of the slowest client weren’t close to the results of the other four apps. We observed the exact opposite of that, Cyberduck needed up to 6 times longer than the other clients to perform the tasks of uploading and downloading the five GB file.
Even though the results of the other four clients were close to each other, when it came to the upload of the big file, Filezilla was in the lead compared to the other transfer clients. Filezilla was 38% faster than the other three clients.
This advantage disappeared when it came to the download of the big file: all four clients downloaded the big file in either 68 or 69 seconds.
When we take a look at the performance of the SFTP softwares when handling small files, we can see that the results vary.
ForkLift finished uploading, downloading and deleting the small files within 14 seconds in each test, meaning it was ahead of all the other SFTP clients in all three scenarios.
ForkLift finished the upload 1.43 times as fast as Yummy FTP, the second fastest client, 1.86 times as fast as Transmit, the third and 3.29 times as fast as Cyberduck, the fourth. FileZilla, the slowest SFTP app in the test, took 10.71 times as long to upload the files as ForkLift, meaning that it needed 150 seconds instead of 14.
When it came to the download of the 16471 small files, ForkLift was almost twice as fast as Yummy FTP, the second fastest and 3.5 times as fast as Transmit, the third fastest. ForkLift was more than 16 times as fast as FileZilla, the slowest tool.
ForkLift needed 14 seconds to delete all the small files and Transmit and Cyberduck, which shared the second place, needed 34 seconds each. That made ForkLift 2.43 times as fast as Transmit and Cyberduck. ForkLift was 3.5 times as fast as Cyberduck and 5.43 times as fast as FileZilla, which finished last.
The clear winner of the SFTP client speed test was ForkLift, but we also have to point out that in some cases the absolute differences between the clients were very small. For example in the case of the upload of the small files, the relative difference between the fastest and the second fastest client was more than 40%, but the absolute difference was only 6 seconds. On the other hand, these smaller differences can add up quickly which becomes pretty obvious when we take a look at the combined execution times of the SFTP tools in our test.
SFTP | ForkLift 3.2.3 | Yummy FTP Pro 2.0.5 | Transmit 5.1.4 | FileZilla Pro 3.34.0 | Cyberduck 6.6.2 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Combined time | 3m 8s | 4m 0s | 4m 14s | 9m 38s | 15m 5s |
Comb. time ratio | 1.00 | 1.28 | 1.35 | 3.07 | 4.81 |
To perform the same tasks, Yummy FTP, the second, needed 1.28 times as much time as ForkLift, the fastest SFTP tool and in third place, Transmit needed 1.35 times as much as ForkLift. Compared to the second and third fastest SFTP tools ForkLift shortened a 4 minutes long task by almost 1 minute. Because of the poor results of Filezilla uploading the small files and the poor results of Cyberduck uploading the big file, these two clients placed fourth and fifth respectively in the SFTP Speed Test. Filezilla needed 3 times as long as ForkLift and Cyberduck almost 5 times as long as ForkLift to perform all five tasks.
Show/Hide Table of SFTP ComparisonFree Sftp Client For Mac
SFTP | ||||||
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File Operation | Test | ForkLift 3.2.3 | Transmit 5.1.4 | Cyberduck 6.6.2 | FileZilla Pro 3.34.0 | Yummy FTP Pro 2.0.5 |
Upload (5GB file) | #1 | 1m 17s | 1m 17s | 5m 54s | 0m 56s | 1m 19s |
#2 | 1m 17s | 1m 20s | 6m 22s | 0m 56s | 1m 17s | |
#3 | 1m 18s | 1m 19s | 6m 11s | 0m 57s | 1m 18s | |
Best | 77s | 77s | 354s | 56s | 77s | |
Download (5GB file) | #1 | 1m 10s | 1m 11s | 6m 2s | 1m 12s | 1m 10s |
#2 | 1m 9s | 1m 8s | 5m 56s | 1m 9s | 1m 8s | |
#3 | 1m 9s | 1m 9s | 5m 59s | 1m 8s | 1m 9s | |
Best | 69s | 68s | 356s | 68s | 68s | |
Upload (16471 items – 264,8MB) | #1 | 0m 15s | 0m 27s | 0m 47s | 2m 31s | 0m 20s |
#2 | 0m 14s | 0m 26s | 0m 46s | 2m 32s | 0m 20s | |
#3 | 0m 15s | 0m 26s | 0m 47s | 2m 30s | 0m 21s | |
Best | 14s | 26s | 46s | 150s | 20s | |
Download (16471 items – 264,8MB) | #1 | 0m 14s | 0m 51s | 2m 1s | 3m 48s | 0m 26s |
#2 | 0m 15s | 0m 49s | 1m 55s | 3m 49s | 0m 28s | |
#3 | 0m 14s | 0m 50s | 1m 57s | 3m 48s | 0m 26s | |
Best | 14s | 49s | 115s | 228s | 26s | |
Delete (16471 items – 264,8MB) | #1 | 0m 14s | 0m 34s | 0m 35s | 1m 19s | 0m 49s |
#2 | 0m 14s | 0m 34s | 0m 34s | 1m 16s | 0m 50s | |
#3 | 0m 14s | 0m 35s | 0m 35s | 1m 17s | 0m 49s | |
Best | 14s | 34s | 34s | 76s | 49s |
The best WebDAV clients for Mac compared
As with the two previous protocols, using WebDAV HTTPS also delivered similar results when it comes to working with the big file.
Using WebDAV, ForkLift was the first to finish the upload of the 5 GB file, but Transmit and Filezilla were only 1 second slower, meaning there was no significant difference between them.
The same three clients (ForkLift, Transmit and Filezilla) were also the fastest to download the same file, needing the same amount of time (44 seconds) to finish. Cyberduck executed both tasks significantly slower, it needed more than double the time to finish.
Yummy FTP was also significantly slower uploading, but it only managed to download a part of the 5 GB file every time we tried to download the file (which was more than three times). Sadly, we don’t have any valid data to share about the big file download via WebDAV using Yummy FTP because the download process didn’t finish successfully.
As usual, working with multiple small files delivered more diverse results than working with a single big file also using WebDAV over HTTPS.
Osx Sftp Client
ForkLift was the fastest WebDAV client to upload the small files. ForkLift uploaded the files within 38 seconds, 1.26 times as fast as Transmit, the second fastest. Cyberduck and Yummy FTP took more than twice as much time as ForkLift to upload the small files and Filezilla took more than 7 times as much.
With the 27 seconds download time, ForkLift was the fastest WebDAV tool to download the 16471 small files. Transmit, which came in second also in this test, took double the time (55 seconds) to do the same. Cyberduck needed more than 5 times as long and Filezilla 7 times as long as ForkLift.
(The 69 seconds download time of Yummy FTP Pro in this scenario was measured using an earlier version of the software (version 2.0.3 instead of the latest version 2.0.5) because the latest version was downloading extremely slowly: the download took about an hour long. So instead of taking the latest data, we took the data of a previous test. We are sure that this problem will be solved in one of the upcoming updates of the software.)
Cyberduck was the fastest to delete all the small files from the remote server via WebDAV HTTPS. Cyberduck outperformed all the other clients because it managed to delete the files within 5 seconds whereas ForkLift, the second fastest client, needed 90 seconds to do the same thing. This means that Cyberduck was 18 times as fast as the second fastest client and 30 times as fast as the slowest client in this test. Cyberduck has this big lead over the other tools because it supports server-side recursive deletion which the other tools don’t support at this moment.
Because of the issues we had encountered using Yummy FTP via WebDAV, we had to leave it out from the comparison of the combined times needed to perform all the tasks using WebDAV.
WebDAV | ForkLift 3.2.3 | Transmit 5.1.4 | Cyberduck 6.6.2 | FileZilla Pro 3.34.0 |
---|---|---|---|---|
Combined time | 4m 05s | 5m 36s | 7m 9s | 11m 28s |
Combined time ratio | 1.00 | 1.28 | 1.35 | 3.07 |
Out of the four clients which were able to finish all five tasks successfully, ForkLift was the fastest WebDAV client. ForkLift completed all tasks within 4 minutes and 5 seconds which made it 1.37 times as fast as Transmit, the second and 1.75 times as fast as Cyberduck, the third. By comparing the combined execution times of the fastest and the slowest WebDav clients, we see that using ForkLift instead of FileZilla saved 7 minutes and 23 seconds.
The best Amazon S3 clients for Mac compared
Since Yummy FTP doesn’t support the Amazon S3 protocol, we could only test four out of the five clients: ForkLift, Transmit, Cyberduck and FileZilla. During the Amazon S3 speed test, we transferred a 1 GB file as the big file.
ForkLift was the fastest Amazon S3 tool to upload the big file, it was 1.18 times as fast as Cyberduck, the second and 1.68 as fast as Transmit, the third. It took Filezilla almost 3 minutes to upload the file which was 4.48 times as long as the upload time of ForkLift.
There weren’t significant differences between the download times of the tools during the download of the 1 GB file via Amazon S3. ForkLift and Filezilla both downloaded the big file within 30 seconds finishing just 1 second before Transmit and 4 seconds before Cyberduck.
Testing the Amazon S3 browsers with small files, delivered very varied results. In each scenario, two out of the four clients finished in much less time than the other two.
It took ForkLift 3 minutes and 41 seconds (221 seconds) to upload the small files which was the best result in this test. Completing the same job took Transmit 27% more time. It took Cyberduck more than 12 minutes to upload the same files which is 3.39 as much time as it took ForkLift. Filezilla needed more than 34 minutes to upload the files which is 9.24 times as much as the upload time of ForkLift.
We can also see a similar outcome in the case of the download: ForkLift finished first and Transmit second. Transmit needed 41% more time than ForkLift to complete the download of the small files. Cyberduck and Filezilla also lagged behind ForkLift and Transmit this time by a large margin. Cyberduck, the slowest client in this test, needed 32 minutes and 33 seconds to download the files whereas ForkLift needed only 3 minutes and 27 seconds. That means that it took Cyberduck 9.43 times as long to complete the task as it took ForkLift.
On the other hand, Cyberduck was the first to delete the 16471 small files finishing 2 seconds before ForkLift. In this test Transmit was the slowest Amazon S3 app, it needed almost 5 times as much time to delete the small files as Cyberduck.
When we add up the times needed to perform all five tasks using the Amazon S3 protocol, we can see that ForkLift is the clear winner of the Amazon S3 Speed Test.
Amazon S3 | ForkLift 3.2.3 | Transmit 5.1.4 | Cyberduck 6.6.2 | FileZilla Pro 3.34.0 |
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Combined time | 11m 49s | 28m 30s | 49m 52s | 66m 6s |
Combined time ratio | 1.00 | 2.41 | 4.22 | 5.59 |
Even the second-placed Transmit needed 2.41 times as much time to finish the operations as ForkLift and Cyberduck more than 4 times as much. FileZilla, the slowest client in this test, took 5.59 times as long as ForkLift. That means that using ForkLift instead of FileZilla to complete these five tasks saved almost 55 minutes.
Show/Hide Table of Amazon S3 ComparisonAmazon S3 | |||||
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File Operation | Test | ForkLift 3.2.3 | Transmit 5.1.4 | Cyberduck 6.6.2 | FileZilla Pro 3.34.0 |
Upload (1GB file) | #1 | 0m 49s | 1m 9s | 0m 49s | 3m 7s |
#2 | 0m 48s | 1m 7s | 0m 50s | 3m 11s | |
#3 | 0m 40s | 1m 16s | 0m 47s | 2m 59s | |
Best | 40s | 67s | 47s | 179s | |
Download (1GB file) | #1 | 0m 32s | 0m 32s | 0m 34s | 0m 31s |
#2 | 0m 30s | 0m 31s | 0m 34s | 0m 30s | |
#3 | 0m 33s | 0m 32s | 0m 36s | 0m 31s | |
Best | 30s | 31s | 34s | 30s | |
Upload (16471 items – 264,8MB) | #1 | 3m 52s | 4m 42s | 12m 29s | 89m 18s |
#2 | 3m 41s | 4m 40s | 12m 36s | 34m 3s | |
#3 | 3m 43s | 4m 41s | 12m 39s | 37m 19s | |
Best | 221s | 280s | 749s | 2043s | |
Download (16471 items – 264,8MB) | #1 | 4m 43s | 5m 8s | 32m 33s | 19m 6s |
#2 | 3m 27s | 5m 9s | 32m 38s | 20m 26s | |
#3 | 3m 28s | 4m 51s | 32m 36s | 19m 57s | |
Best | 207s | 291s | 1953s | 1146s | |
Delete (16471 items – 264,8MB) | #1 | 3m 32s | 17m 44s | 3m 38s | 9m 38s |
#2 | 3m 31s | 18m 11s | 3m 29s | 9m 28s | |
#3 | 3m 33s | 17m 21s | 3m 32s | 9m 32s | |
Best | 211s | 1041s | 209s | 568s |
Conclusion of the Speed Test
ForkLift was the fastest client in 80% of all scenarios, finishing 16 times on top. Because in some cases some of the file transfer clients shared the best times or were close to each other, we didn’t only count the number of top finishes but also compared the combined execution times of the clients with each other. That way we got a clearer picture of the overall performances of the tools.
ForkLift wasn’t only the fastest client to complete all twenty tasks in our test but it also finished on top using each protocol. ForkLift was the fastest FTP, the fastest SFTP, the fastest WebDAV and even the fastest Amazon S3 client. When we compare the combined execution times which were needed to finish all twenty tasks, we see that there are huge differences between the transfer times of the softwares. ForkLift is the clear winner of the test, finishing all twenty tasks within 21 minutes and 12 seconds. Transmit, the second fastest, finished the same tasks within 41 minutes and 21 seconds.
That means that even the second fastest tool needed almost twice as much time as ForkLift. Cyberduck, which came in third, needed 3.57 times as much as Forklift and FileZilla, the slowest client, needed 4.33 times as much.
If you want to choose the best file transfer client, you should take into consideration how reliable the tool is and how fast it transfers files. It is clear from our test, that even the smallest differences in the execution times can add up easily and quickly. After performing only the twenty tasks in our test, there was a 20 minutes difference between ForkLift, the fastest and Transmit, the second fastest file transfer tool and a 70 minutes difference between ForkLift, the fastest and FileZilla, the slowest tool.
ForkLift is the clear winner of our test because it not only finished on top in 80% of all the tested scenarios but it also had the best combined execution time of all the tested tools.
TL;DR
In our test, we compared the file transfer speed of five advanced file transfer clients: Cyberduck, FileZilla Pro, ForkLift, Transmit and Yummy FTP Pro. We tested the tools using four protocols: FTP, SFTP, WebDAV HTTPS and Amazon S3.
We wanted to find out how fast the tools were uploading, downloading and deleting a single large file (1 or 5 GB) and multiple small files (16471 files with a combined size of 264.8 MB) over the tested protocols.
Mac Os Sftp Client
During our test, we saw bigger differences between the file transfer tools when we were working with a lot of small files. In these cases, ForkLift proved to be especially fast. In some of these scenarios, ForkLift was up to 16 times as fast as the slowest tools. For example, downloading the multiple small files via SFTP took ForkLift only 14 seconds, whereas doing the same took FileZilla 3 minutes and 48 seconds.
The only time when a tool other than ForkLift was in the lead by a large margin was in the case of the deletion of the small files via WebDAV HTTPS. In that scenario, Cyberduck outperformed all the other tested clients because it supports server-side recursive deletion which the other tools don’t.
Free Sftp Client For Windows
ForkLift was the clear winner of the entire speed test. ForkLift reached the first place in 80% of the tested scenarios. It also had the best combined execution times using each and every tested protocol. ForkLift completed all 20 tasks together almost twice as fast as the second fastest tool and more than four times as fast as the slowest tool.