5 Best Command Line FTP Client for Linux

In this article I will explain 5 best command line FTP Client for Linux. File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is used to transfer files between two computers over a network and Internet. FTP service is very important to ensure the transfer of files can be done. For some servers, though not provide FTP service, FTP client is necessary to be installed so that the client can send files to an FTP server if required.

Before GUI Operating system first FTP application were made for the command line interface after that there are lots of GUI FTP client made. Still developer and system admin use CLI based FTP client to transfer data who prefer using old method.

You may also like:

• Setup automated remote backup using FTP
• How to permanently mount FTP share on Linux?
• How to setup FTP (vsftp) server in Linux?

Best Command Line FTP Client for Linux

These are the list of the best command line based FTP clients for Linux.

FTP

By default Linux Operating System comes with built in FTP client that can be easily accessible just typing the ftp command in your terminal.

Using FTP Client you can connect to server anonymously if you have enabled the feature on the server or you can use your ftp credentials to download and upload the files between your local machine and ftp server.

If you use ftp client to transfer files between two computers the connection is not secure and data transfer will be in plain text means not encrypted. To secure data transfer you can use sFTP or SCP.

LFTP

LFTP is a free and Open Source command line ftp client it is designed for different file transfer protocols. For example sftp, fish, torrent.

As we know that it is open source, programme is available  in the repository of all the most used Linux based operating system.

You can install LFTP from default repositories using package as shown below.

$ sudo apt install lftp [On Debian/Ubuntu]
$ sudo yum install lftp [On CentOs/RHEL]
$ sudo dnf install lftp [On Fedora]

NcFTP

NcFTP is a free and cross platform FTP client and this is the first ever alternative to the standard FTP program. It is easy to use and with sever feature and performance enhancements to FTP.

Features:

• Host redialing
• Background processing
• Auto-resume downloads
• Filename completion progress meters
• ncftpput and ncftpget supportive and many more

You can install NcFTP from default repositories using package as shown below.

$ sudo apt install ncftp [On Debian/Ubuntu]
$ sudo yum install ncftp [On CentOs/RHEL]
$ sudo dnf install ncftp [On Fedora]

Cbftp

Cbftp is multi purpose advanced level FTP/FXP client it is used for efficient large scale data spreading. It is also support most regular FTP/FXP used client. You can run it in your terminal and its provide a semi-graphical user interface.

Features:

• Support multiple encodings
• Skip listing
• Remote commands for UDP call like race, download, fxp, raw, idle etc ..
• Data encryption with AES-256

Yafc

Yafc is a also open source FTP client it is designed as a replacement for the standard FTP program with support for POSIX-compliant system. It is completely free with high features like recursive get/put/fxp/ls/rm, queuing, tab completion, aliases and also support for SSH2 and PROXY.

You can install NcFTP from default repositories using package as shown below.

$ sudo apt install yafc [On Debian/Ubuntu]
$ sudo yum install yafc [On CentOs/RHEL]
$ sudo dnf install yafc [On Fedora]