PuTTY alternative with tabs, for Windows, Linux and macOS.

~/xtermium $ cat moving.txt

Moving over from PuTTY.

XTermium doesn’t read PuTTY’s saved sessions from the Registry, so add your hosts to folders in the sidebar by hand, or import your ~/.ssh/config if you keep one. Each session opens in a tab instead of a window of its own, and the command palette finds it by name.

Your keys stay where they are. On Windows, XTermium signs in through your SSH agent, Pageant or the OpenSSH agent, so whatever you load into Pageant today works as it is. Key files with a passphrase prompt, passwords and keyboard-interactive work too. Keep each password in a shared login once and let every session pick it.

Telnet and serial ports open in tabs as well, so the switch and the console cable come along.

~/xtermium $ cat putty.txt

What PuTTY is.

From its own site, chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty, read on 4 November 2026:

~/xtermium $ diff --side-by-side

PuTTY and XTermium, side by side.

The same ten questions, asked of both. Each answer is what the tool’s own pages say, with no scores and no prices of theirs.

~/xtermium $ cat xtermium.txt

What XTermium is.

If you use PuTTY today, XTermium keeps the parts you rely on and puts them in one window. SSH, telnet and serial ports still open, but each session lands in a tab instead of a window of its own, and any tabs split into panes, side by side, stacked, 2×2 or tiled. Saved sessions live in a folder tree you search by typing, not in the Registry, and one shared login signs in to many hosts. The keys you load into Pageant work as they are. File transfer moves from PSCP and PSFTP to an SFTP panel beside the shell, on the same connection, and port forwarding becomes local, remote and SOCKS5 tunnels with live traffic. RDP, VNC, WinRM and BMC consoles join them in the same sidebar. XTermium is free under the Apache License 2.0, on Windows, Linux and macOS, and everything it stores is encrypted on disk.

~/xtermium $ cat stay.txt

When to stay with PuTTY.

Stay with PuTTY if a small, single-purpose SSH and telnet client is all you need. It may fit better than XTermium when:

~/xtermium $ cat license.txt

Free and open source.

XTermium is free and open source under the Apache License 2.0: every connection type, on every OS, on any number of machines. Pro, the one paid plan, is the hosted part: end-to-end encrypted sync between your computers, and Terminal Co-op.

Pro costs €2.99 a month or €29.99 a year, excluding VAT, and its checkout is in test mode for now. Pricing.

~/xtermium $ cat faq.txt

Questions about moving from PuTTY.

~/xtermium $ ls ~/xtermium

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