Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised May 27, 2026

Secure file transfer program

sftp is a command-line interface client program to transfer files using the SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), which runs inside the encrypted Secure Shell connection.

Last revised
May 27, 2026
Read time
≈ 1 min
Length
100 w
Citations
1
Source
sftp
DeveloperThe OpenBSD Project
Written inC
Operating systemUnix, Unix-like, Microsoft Windows
TypeCommand
LicenseBSD, ISC, public domain
Websitewww.openssh.com
Repositorygithub.com/openssh/openssh-portable/

sftp is a command-line interface client program to transfer files using the SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), which runs inside the encrypted Secure Shell connection.

It provides an interactive interface similar to that of traditional command-line FTP clients.

One common implementation of sftp is part of the OpenSSH project.1 There are other command-line SFTP clients that use different names, such as lftp, PSFTP and PSCP (from PuTTY package) and WinSCP.

See also

See also

References

References