Most people who search this are not comparing two products. They are on a Mac, they used PuTTY at their last job, and they want to know what to use now. Short answer below, then the longer one.
There is no Mac version of PuTTY, and there probably never will be. The project's own FAQ entry "Will there ever be a Mac version of PuTTY?" says: "As of 2026, I doubt that the core PuTTY team will ever finish one." The FAQ also states that release versions of the PuTTY tools currently only run on Windows systems and Unix. Anything in an app store calling itself "PuTTY for Mac" is not from the PuTTY project.
And before you install anything at all: macOS already ships OpenSSH. Open Terminal, type ssh user@host, and you have replaced the main thing PuTTY did. scp and sftp replace PSCP and PSFTP. ssh-keygen replaces PuTTYgen. ssh-agent replaces Pageant. For a lot of people that is the whole answer and they should stop reading here.
You want a separate app only if you want the things a bare shell does not give you: saved host records with a GUI, a file browser, live metrics, and — the reason we exist — an agent that can investigate a machine for you.
PuTTY describes itself as "a free implementation of SSH and Telnet for Windows and Unix platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator." The current release is 0.84, dated 22 May 2026, with binaries published for 64-bit x86 Windows, 64-bit Arm Windows, 32-bit x86 Windows and 32-bit Arm Windows, plus Unix source. It is a suite: putty.exe "the SSH and Telnet client itself", pscp.exe "an SCP client", psftp.exe "an SFTP client", plink.exe "a command-line interface to the PuTTY back ends", pageant.exe "an SSH authentication agent", and puttygen.exe "a RSA and DSA key generation utility".
Tryssh is a native macOS SSH workspace with an agentic copilot per host. Hosts, chats and history live in SQLite under ~/.tryssh; SSH keys and passphrases live in the macOS keychain and never touch a database. You describe an outcome — "disk is at 89%, find what is eating it" — and the agent works over SSH, showing you the exact command before anything mutates state.
Verified as of July 29, 2026. Every PuTTY claim on this page is taken from the official project site at chiark.greenend.org.uk, with the exact source URL in an HTML comment next to the claim in this page's source. Found something stale? Tell us.
Short, because these two tools barely overlap.
| Capability | PuTTY | Tryssh |
|---|---|---|
| Runs on macOS | No No official Mac release, and the FAQ doubts there ever will be one | Yes macOS 14+ only (Apple silicon, arm64) |
| Runs on Windows / Unix | Yes Windows binaries for x86 and Arm, 32- and 64-bit; Unix source | No Not shipped. Windows and Linux are planned, not available |
| Price | Yes Free, under a permissive licence | Free to download; agent turns metered. 200 credits to start, Pro $19/mo for 2,400, Scale $29/mo for 4,500 |
| Protocols | Yes SSH and Telnet | No SSH only. No Telnet |
| File transfer | Yes PSCP and PSFTP, both command-line | Yes Graphical SFTP browser and remote file editor over the same SSH session |
| Key generation & agent | Yes PuTTYgen and Pageant ship with it | No generator. Import an existing private key into the vault, or use your existing ssh-agent |
| Scripting | Yes Plink drives the back ends from a script or batch file | No GUI app. No CLI, no scripting interface |
| Saved host list | Yes Saved sessions: a full configuration plus connection details, per entry | Yes Host records in SQLite; secrets in the macOS keychain, never in a database |
| AI agent | No None, by design | Yes Per-host copilot that runs commands on its own SSH exec channel, multi-step, behind a default-deny approval gate |
| Live host metrics | No Not its job | Yes CPU, memory, disk and network sampled while connected |
| Track record | Yes Still shipping — 0.84, May 2026 — after decades in production everywhere | No 0.1.6, first shipped 2026 |
PuTTY connects you to a machine and gets out of the way. That is the correct design for what it is, and it is why it has lasted. Tryssh is trying to do something PuTTY has never claimed to do: help with the work once you are connected.
exec channel — architecturally separate from your interactive PTY, so it cannot read your terminal or type into it — runs a command, reads the output, and decides the next step.ls, cat, df, ps, journalctl, systemctl status, kubectl get and friends) and contains no shell metacharacters. Anything unrecognised is treated as unsafe. Everything else renders the exact command on a card and waits for your click, and a denylist — mkfs, dd of=, recursive rm against a system path, flushing firewall rules, stopping the sshd you are connected through, piping a download into a shell — always asks, even with auto-approve on.ai.definable.tryssh; the database stores only a reference.Not a claim about safety in general. A default-deny gate is a real constraint, not a guarantee. It stops an agent surprising you; it does not stop you approving something you should not have. You are still the operator.
Four steps, and the first one is free.
Tryssh has no importer. There is no import for PuTTY saved sessions and none for ~/.ssh/config either. Hosts are added by hand in the app. If you have a long list of saved sessions, add the ones you actually use and leave the rest.
macOS ships OpenSSH. ssh user@host in Terminal, scp and sftp for files, ssh-keygen for keys, ssh-agent for Pageant's job. If that covers you, you are done and you owe nobody anything.
PuTTY keeps private keys in its own .ppk format, which is not what the OpenSSH tooling on macOS reads. PuTTYgen has an export option for the OpenSSH format — do that on the Windows box while you still have it. An OpenSSH private key is what Tryssh's key vault expects.
Name, host, port, user, and one of three auth types: password, private key, or ssh-agent. Add a key once to the key vault and reuse it across hosts — the key bytes and any passphrase go to the macOS keychain, the database stores only a reference.
"What is filling /var and is any of it safe to delete." Three minutes of that tells you more than any comparison table, this one included.
ssh user@host, scp, sftp, ssh-keygen, ssh-agent. That covers most of what PuTTY did. Install something else only if you want saved host records in a GUI, a file browser, live metrics, or an agent that investigates for you.~/.ssh/config. Hosts are added by hand in the app.ANTHROPIC_API_KEY and the gateway is skipped entirely.That is the whole evaluation. 200 agent turns to start, no card required.