Android SFTP Clients Review

I’ve done a quick survey of SFTP clients for Android. Here are my findings.

Recommendation

My top pick is Owlfiles

• (+) supports a lot of protocols alongside SFTP (e.g. WebDav and S3)
• (+) shows previews of remote files
• (+) supports private keys
• (+) is aesthetically pleasing
• (~) It’s free(mium), but not very pushy to upgrade
• (-) closed source

Other contenders

• Termux
  • (+) open source
  • (~) first and foremost a terminal emulator
  • (~) scp is included
  • (-) not particularly friendly for quickly uploading a file
• FTPClient on F-Droid
  • (+) open source
  • (+) decent UI
  • (-) some features are broken (e.g. renaming a file)
• Terminus
  • (+) very polished
  • (-) closed source
  • (~) first and foremost an SSH client
  • (-) wants you to sign up for a subscription
  • (-) has some odd restrictions about uploading files from the Downloads folder

Discussion

If you have any thoughts or comments, drop a reply in this mastodon thread.