Comparison of IRC clients

The following tables compare general and technical information between a number of notable IRC client programs which have been discussed in independent, reliable prior published sources.

General

Basic general information about the notableclients: creator/company, license, etc. Clients listed on a light purple background are no longer in active development.

1. ^ webbrowser
2. ^ ncomp
3. ^ cldaemon
4. ^ dev
5. ^ Requires Cygwin^[23][24]
6. ^ Requires OS X v10.4.3 or later
7. ^ BitchX is known to work on BSDI 2.0, 2.1, 3.1, 4.0; FreeBSD 2.x, 3.x, 4.0; NetBSD 3.x, 4.x; SunOS 4.1.4; Ultrix; AIX; HP-UX 9.x, 10.x; IRIX 5.x, 6.x; Solaris 5.x and later; Linux; OSF/1 (DEC Alpha); QNX
8. ^ WeeChat tested on FreeBSD 4.11, 5.4, 6.0; NetBSD 2.0, 2.1; OpenBSD 3.6, 3.7, 3.8; Solaris 5.10; QNX 6.3^[25]
9. ^ In development^[25]
10. ^ patch
11. ^ plugin
12. ^ planned
13. ^ Supported_Via_Scripting
14. ^ Incompatible with other IRC clients^[26]
15. ^ Supports the DCC Resume protocol^[27]
16. ^ Supported via a script^[28]
17. ^ Features_Colloquy_(IRC_client)_A
18. ^ ERC_Proxy_Support
19. ^ ERC_Auto_Updates
20. ^ Features_HexChat_A
21. ^ Features_ircII_A
22. ^ Features_Konversation_A
23. ^ mIRC_Updates

Release

A brief overview of the release history.

Operating system support

The operating systems on which the clients can run natively (without emulation).

Unix and Unix-like operating systems:

• Unix (BSD): 386BSD, BSD/OS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, SunOS, ULTRIX
• Unix (System V): AIX, A/UX, HP-UX, IRIX, SCO OpenServer, Solaris, UnixWare
• Unix-like: Linux, NeXTSTEP, OpenVMS^{[citation needed]}, OSF/1, QNX, Tru64 UNIX

Protocol support

What IRC related protocols and standards are supported by each client.

Direct Client-to-Client (DCC) support

The Direct Client-to-Client Protocol (DCC) has been the primary method of establishing connections directly between IRC clients for a long time now. Once established, DCC connections bypass the IRC network and servers, allowing for all sorts of data to be transferred between clients including files and direct chat sessions.

IRCv3 support

This software is compliant natively; other software may be compliant with extensions.^[20][21]

IRCv3 SASL mechanisms

IRC SASL authentication primarily uses the same mechanisms as SASL in other protocols. Most commonly:

• PLAIN as defined by RFC 4616
• EXTERNAL as defined by RFC 4422
• SCRAM-SHA-256 as defined by RFC 7677

Features

Information on what features each of the clients support.

See also

• Comparison of cross-platform instant messaging clients
  • Comparison of user features of messaging platforms
  • Comparison of instant messaging protocols
• Comparison of VoIP software
  • List of SIP software
• Comparison of LAN messengers

References

1. ^ Bersirc IRC Client - about Bersirc Archived 2011-08-12 at the Wayback Machine
2. ^ "HexChat website"
3. ^ "Download leafChat Free". Mac.softpedia.com. 2010-01-21. Retrieved 2012-11-18.
4. ^ "mIRC: Register mIRC". Retrieved 2009-07-14.
5. ^ "mIRC: Personal FAQ". Retrieved 2011-04-09.
6. ^ "Which versions of Windows are supported?". Retrieved 19 March 2023.
7. ^ GNU Emacs has been demonstrated running in terminal mode on ReactOS via its Win32 console subsystem; this is unofficial and not documented by the Emacs or ReactOS projects. R, Alexander. "ReactOS and emacs". Retrieved 22 January 2026.
8. ^ "Emacs 29 has been ported to the Haiku operating system.". Retrieved 19 March 2023.
9. ^ "Emacs | eCSoft/2". The Complete OS/2 Software Encyclopedia
10. ^ "EmacsForDOS"
11. ^ Connect to the ReactOS IRC Channels
12. ^ 2012-07-03: 4.2.0 Released!
13. ^ "Ticket 3915 requesting OTR support". Archived from the original on 2019-10-01. Retrieved 2017-03-17.
14. ^ "Irssi 1.2.0 OTR Migration Path". Retrieved 2020-06-22.
15. ^ "Issue 1418 requesting OTR support"
16. ^ "Issue 651 requesting OTR support"
17. ^ "Cypherpunks - OTR-Enabled Software". Retrieved 2014-03-16.
18. ^ "GitHub - weechat-otr - WeeChat script for Off-the-Record messaging". GitHub. Retrieved 2014-03-16.
19. ^ "Mozilla ChatZilla: Bugzilla Bug 285630: chatzilla does not support resume for dcc downloads". 2009-02-20. Retrieved 2009-07-14.
20. ^ "Clients - IRCv3"
21. ^ "Libraries - IRCv3"
22. ^ "irc"
23. ^ "SourceForge: BitchX files See "INSTALL" included with BitchX". Retrieved 2009-09-18.
24. ^ "WeeChat cygwin". Archived from the original on 2009-09-12. Retrieved 2009-09-18.
25. ^ "WeeChat: Supported OS". Retrieved 2009-09-18.
26. ^ "DCC negotiation and connection". Retrieved 2014-12-16.
27. ^ "DCC Resume protocol". Retrieved 2009-07-14.
28. ^ "SysReset mIRC FileServer". Retrieved 2009-07-14.