# PuTTY

9 Hacker News commenters recommended PuTTY and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free, long-lived Windows SSH client that people reach for for remote management. Critics say it has a lot fewer features overall.

## Why people recommend it

- Long-lived, trusted, widely known (2 comments): "There is normally a wiki page for every popular program which normally contains an official site URL. That's how I remember where to actually get PuTTY." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47016807)) "PuTTY out since 1999 and bumped to 0.82 in 2024 is pretty incredible" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49834885))
- Essential for remote management on Windows (2 comments): "a vital tool of anyone doing remote management from Windows" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48643084)) "start teams, outlook and putty in a citrix session" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48612084))

## What people warn about

- A lot fewer features overall (1 comments): "a lot fewer features overall" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45898595))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Mosh](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mosh.md): 61 recommend
- [SSH](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ssh.md): 57 recommend
- [Termius](https://hackerapproved.com/p/termius.md): 33 recommend
- [Moshi SSH and Mosh terminal for iOS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/moshi.md): 16 recommend
- [Echo SSH and mosh client for iOS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/echo-ios-ssh-and-mosh-client.md): 14 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "PuTTY", https://hackerapproved.com/p/putty/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).