# syq

6 Hacker News commenters recommended syq and 7 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 1 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free tool for fast file copying between machines, with no superuser access or setup flags needed. Critics say its speed claims against rsync lack benchmarks.

## Why people recommend it

- Faster file copying than alternatives (3 comments): "Syq was sometimes much faster and never more than a few percent slower." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49667314)) "the most important benefit is speed of copying" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49645911)) "I'm seeing 5x speedups on my real workloads" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49647355))
- No root access or config needed (2 comments): "No special flags to set, zero config. It just works, optimally, every time." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49648740)) "You don't need superuser access for anything." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49647415))

## What people warn about

- Rsync comparison and benchmarks unconvincing (4 comments): "if you're claiming to be faster than rsync, you should demonstrate why front-and-center" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49647654)) "Seems like you shouldn’t compare it with rsync (yet, if doing delta merges is planned)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49647802)) "Really serious benchmarks never contain any information about network characteristics" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49649211))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Magic Wormhole](https://hackerapproved.com/p/magic-wormhole.md): 21 recommend
- [croc](https://hackerapproved.com/p/croc.md): 13 recommend
- [OpenSSH scp](https://hackerapproved.com/p/scp.md): 12 recommend
- [FileZilla](https://hackerapproved.com/p/filezilla-pro.md): 12 recommend
- [Transmit by Panic](https://hackerapproved.com/p/transmit.md): 10 recommend

## Cite as

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