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PuTTY
A screenshot of PuTTY running under Ubuntu MATE
Developer	Simon Tatham
Release	January 8, 1999 (1999-01-08)[1]
Stable release	0.85[2][3]  / 16 August 2026
Written in	C
Operating system	Microsoft Windows, ReactOS, macOS, Linux
Type	Terminal emulator
License	MIT License[4]
Website	www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
Repository	git.tartarus.org

PuTTY (/ˈpʌti/)^[5] is a free and open-source terminal emulator, serial console and network file transfer application. It supports several network protocols, including SCP, SSH, Telnet, rlogin, and raw socket connection. It can also connect to a serial port. The name "PuTTY" has no official meaning.^[6]

PuTTY was originally written for Microsoft Windows, but it has been ported to various other operating systems. Official ports are available for some Unix-like platforms, with work-in-progress ports to Classic Mac OS and macOS, and unofficial ports have been contributed to platforms such as Symbian,^[7] Windows Mobile and Windows Phone.

PuTTY was written and is maintained primarily by Simon Tatham, a British programmer.

PuTTY supports many variations on the secure remote terminal, and provides user control over the SSH encryption key and protocol version, alternate ciphers such as AES, 3DES, RC4, Blowfish, DES, and public-key authentication. PuTTY uses its own format of key files – PPK (protected by Message Authentication Code).^[8] PuTTY supports SSO through GSSAPI, including user provided GSSAPI DLLs. It also can emulate control sequences from xterm, VT220, VT102 or ECMA-48 terminal emulation, and allows local, remote, or dynamic port forwarding with SSH (including X11 forwarding). The network communication layer supports IPv6, and the SSH protocol supports the zlib@openssh.com delayed compression scheme. It can also be used with local serial port connections.

PuTTY comes bundled with command-line SCP and SFTP clients, called "pscp" and "psftp" respectively, and plink, a command-line connection tool, used for non-interactive sessions.^[9]

PuTTY does not support session tabs directly,^[10] but many wrappers are available that do.^[11]

PuTTY development began in 1996,^[12] and was a usable SSH-2 client by October 2000.^[13][14]

PuTTY consists of several components:

PuTTY

the Telnet, rlogin, and SSH client itself, which can also connect to a serial port

PSCP

an SCP client, i.e. command-line secure file copy. Can also use SFTP to perform transfers

PSFTP

an SFTP client, i.e. general file transfer sessions much like FTP

PuTTYtel

a Telnet-only client

Plink

a command-line interface to the PuTTY back ends. Usually used for SSH Tunneling

Pageant

an SSH authentication agent for PuTTY, PSCP and Plink

PuTTYgen

an RSA, DSA, ECDSA and EdDSA key generation utility

pterm

(Unix version only) an X11 client which supports the same terminal emulation as PuTTY

• Comparison of SSH clients
• Tera Term
• mintty
• WinSCP
• minicom

• PuTTY user manual (copy from 2022)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to PuTTY.

• Official website
• Original project website