# Telnet client

19 Hacker News commenters recommended Telnet client and 9 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended as a quick way to check whether a TCP port responds and for debugging, since it is widely packaged. Caveat: it sends data in plaintext, so critics prefer SSH.

## Why people recommend it

- Checks whether a TCP port responds (3 comments): "I [ab]use telnet regularly as a debugging tool than its intended purpose. Pretty handy tool to check TCP connectivity." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46985334)) "Yeah it's an easy way to check if a port is responding, and you can actually drive some protocols using telnet." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46992714)) "it's an easy way to check if a port is responding" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47000605))
- Useful debugging tool for protocols (3 comments): "I [ab]use telnet regularly as a debugging tool than its intended purpose. Pretty handy tool to check TCP connectivity." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46985334)) "Yeah it's an easy way to check if a port is responding, and you can actually drive some protocols using telnet." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46992714)) "it is a cool debugging tool, so used it for that" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46972654))
- Simple commands that are easy to memorize (2 comments): "the commands are easily memorized" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48964531)) "is simpler and more reliable" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46797023))
- Installable from OS package managers (2 comments): "Search your OS repositories for something like inetutils-telnet." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46779213)) "apt-get install telnet (or whatever the package is called)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46789175))

## What people warn about

- Sends data in plaintext (3 comments): "Telnet is not completely plaintext and has control characters in the upper byte range" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48560285)) "it's a strictly inferior choice these days for poking arbitrary plaintext services" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46968689)) "The point is that the password leaves my machine." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46993121))
- Control character handling problems (2 comments): "Telnet is not completely plaintext and has control characters in the upper byte range" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48560285)) "telnet had its corner cases with control characters" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46968715))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [psql](https://hackerapproved.com/p/psql.md): 8 recommend
- [emacsclient](https://hackerapproved.com/p/emacsclient.md): 5 recommend

## Cite as

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