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.

{| class="wikitable sortable sort-under plainrowheaders" style="width: auto; text-align: center;"

! Client

! Primary developers

! Distribution model

! Software license

! User interface

! Programming language

! scope="row" | Adium

| Thijs Alkemade

| Free software

| GUI

| Objective-C and C

! scope="row" | AmIRC

| Oliver Wagner, Nicolas Sallin, Costel Mincea

| Free software

| GUI

| ?

! scope="row" | Bersirc

| Jamie Frater, Nicholas Copeland

| Free software

| GUI

|C (Delphi originally)

! scope="row" | BitchX

| Colten Edwards

| Free software

| TUI, GUI

| C

! scope="row" | ChatZilla

| James Ross, Robert Ginda, Samuel Sieb, Gijs Kruitbosch

| Free software

| GUI

| JavaScript, XUL

! scope="row" | Colloquy

| Timothy Hatcher, Kiji Roshi

| Free software

| GUI

| Objective-C

! scope="row" | ERC

| Alexander L. Belikoff, Sergey Berezin

| Free software

| TUI, GUI

| Emacs Lisp

! scope="row" | HexChat

| Berke Viktor

| Free software

| TUI, GUI

! scope="row" | Instantbird

| Florian Quèze

| Free software

| GUI

| C++, JavaScript, CSS, XUL

! scope="row" | ircII

| Michael Sandrof

| Free software

| TUI

! scope="row" | Ircle

| Onno Tijdgat

| Commercial, 30-day trial

| GUI

! scope="row" | Irssi

| Timo Sirainen

| Free software

| TUI

! scope="row" | KVIrc

| Szymon Stefanek

| Free software

| GUI

|C++

! scope="row" | Konversation

| KDE

| Free software

| GUI

|C++

! scope="row" | LeafChat

| Samuel Marshall

| Free software

| GUI

|Java

! scope="row" | Linkinus

| Conceited Software

| Commercial, 15-day trial

| GUI

|Objective-C

! scope="row" | Mibbit

| Jimmy Moore

| Textual Adbar

| Web

|JavaScript frontend,<br />Java backend

! scope="row" | mIRC

| Khaled Mardam-Bey

| Shareware, 30-day trial

| GUI

|C/C++

! scope="row" | Nettalk

| Nicolas Kruse

|Free software

| GUI

| Visual Basic

! scope="row" | Pidgin

| Free software

| GUI

! scope="row" | PIRCH

| Northwest Computer Services

|Shareware

| GUI

|Delphi

! scope="row" | PJIRC

| Philippe Detournay

| Free software

| GUI

|Java

! scope="row" | Quassel

| Manuel Nickschas, Marcus Eggenberger, Alexander von Renteln

| Free software

| TUI, GUI

|C++

! scope="row" | rcirc

| Ryan Yeske

| Free software

| TUI

| Emacs Lisp

! scope="row" | Smuxi

| Mirco Bauer

| Free software

| GUI, TUI, server

|C#

! scope="row" | Snak

| Kent Sorensen

| Commercial

| GUI

| ?

! scope="row" | Thunderbird

| Mozilla Foundation

| Free software

| GUI

| C, C++, JavaScript

! scope="row" | Visual IRC

| Jesse McGrew

| Free software

| GUI

|Delphi

! scope="row" | WeeChat

| Sebastien Helleu

| Free software

| TUI, GUI

! scope="row" | XiRCON

| Mark Hanson

| Freeware

| GUI

| Borland C++, scripted with Tcl

! Client

! Primary developers

! Distribution model

! Software license

! User interface

! Programming language

Release

A brief overview of the release history.

{| class="wikitable sortable sort-under plainrowheaders" style="width: auto; text-align: center; table-layout: fixed;"

|- class="unsortable sort-under"

! colspan="2" | First public release

! colspan="2" | First stable release

! rowspan="2" | Latest stable release

|- class="sortable sort-under"

! Client

! Date

! Version

! Date

! Version

! scope="row" | AmIRC

| 1995

! scope="row" | Bersirc

| 1999

! scope="row" | BitchX

| 1996

! scope="row" | ChatZilla

| 2001

! scope="row" | Colloquy

| 2005

! scope="row" | DMDirc

| 2007

! scope="row" | ERC

| 1999?

! scope="row" | HexChat

| 2009-10-04

| r249

| 2009-10-09

| 2.86.0

! scope="row" | ircII

| 1989

| 2.0.0

| 1989

| 2.0.0

! scope="row" | Ircle

| 1995

! scope="row" | Irssi

| 1999

! scope="row" | KVIrc

| 1998

| 0.6.0

| 1999-12-21

| 1.0.0

! scope="row" | Konversation

| 2002

! scope="row" | LeafChat

| ?

|1.0

! scope="row" | Linkinus

| 2007

! scope="row" | Mibbit

| 2008

| web application, no version

! scope="row" | mIRC

| 1995

! scope="row" | Nettalk

| 2004

! scope="row" | PIRCH

| 1995

! scope="row" | PJIRC

| 2002

! scope="row" | Quassel

| 2008-08-27

| 0.3.0

! scope="row" | rcirc

| ?

! scope="row" | Smuxi

| 2008-07-29

| 0.6

| 2010-09-03

| 0.8

! scope="row" | Snak

| 1997

! scope="row" | Visual IRC

| 1995

! scope="row" | WeeChat

| 2003

|- class="unsortable sort-under"

! rowspan="2" | Client

! Date

! Version

! Date

! Version

! rowspan="2" | Latest stable release

|- class="unsortable sort-under"

! colspan="2" | First public release

! colspan="2" | First stable release

Operating system support

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

{| class="wikitable sortable sort-under plainrowheaders" style="width: auto; text-align: center; font-size: smaller; table-layout: fixed;"

! Client

! Windows 7, Vista

! XP, 2000

! NT 4.0

! NT 3.x

! Me, 98

! 95

! 3.1x

! ReactOS

! macOS (Intel/PPC)

! OS 9

! OS 8

! System 7 (PPC/68k)

! BeOS, Haiku

! OS/2, eCS, ArcaOS

! AmigaOS (68k)

! AmigaOS 4, MorphOS (PPC)

! DOS

! scope="row" | AmIRC

! scope="row" | Bersirc

! scope="row" | BitchX

! scope="row" | HexChat

| (2.9.5)

! scope="row" | ircII

! scope="row" | Irssi

! scope="row" | Konversation

! scope="row" | KVIrc

! scope="row" | LeafChat

! scope="row" | Linkinus

| |name=Unix_operating_system_support_WeeChat_A|group=Note