sftp
Shares rank 15 of 17 file transfer apps by recommenders
People recommend sftp as a simple, secure way to transfer files over SSH, fast on data-center and accelerated links. Critics say it is slow on high-latency connections.
People recommend sftp as a simple, secure way to transfer files over SSH, fast on data-center and accelerated links. Critics say it is slow on high-latency connections.
11 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 6
- approval share
- 45%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Preferred for simple secure transfers
“there are better options for secure bulk transfers (sftp, rsync, etc)”
Comment from 27 Mar 2026 in “Moving from GitHub to Codeberg, for lazy people” “SFTP is just simpler and better, if available.”
Comment from 16 Aug 2026 on Hacker News “rsync and sftp, like god intended”
Comment from 7 Oct 2026 in “Incident with Git Operations, Pull Requests and Actions – Resolved”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Slow on high-latency connections
“The design of sftp is such that it cannot exploit "TCP sliding windows" to maximize bandwidth on high-latency connections.”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “High Performance SSH/SCP” “The main problem is that it packetizes the data and waits for responses”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “High Performance SSH/SCP”
Other file transfer apps people recommend
The four most recommended other file transfer apps, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LocalSend | 81 | 25 | 76% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Magic Wormhole | 21 | 6 | 78% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Kermit | 15 | 4 | 79% | 2 | — | — |
| croc | 13 | 3 | 81% | 5 | — | Approved |
| sftpThis page | 5 | 6 | 45% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
All 11 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“becomes very comfortable with a config file with aliases and keys set up”
“Things like per-user chroot, managing permissions, restricting access to port 22”
“rsync and sftp, like god intended”
“SFTP is just simpler and better, if available.”
“Always annoys me -p(port) for ssh clashes with -p(reserve permissions) for sftp and scp.”
“there are better options for secure bulk transfers (sftp, rsync, etc)”
“some years ago there were cases when scp and sftp were losing silently, without warnings, some file metadata”
“using it in the data-center or over WAN accelerated links is still fast”
“The main problem is that it packetizes the data and waits for responses”
“The design of sftp is such that it cannot exploit "TCP sliding windows" to maximize bandwidth on high-latency connections.”
“I use lftp a lot because of it's better UI compared to sftp”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.