A dual-pane Cyberduck alternative for FTP & SFTP

Cyberduck is a great multi-protocol browser. Upstream is a focused FTP/SFTP workhorse with a true two-panel workflow. Which one fits depends on what you connect to.

Download Upstream freeSee all features

Cyberduck’s superpower is breadth: beyond FTP and SFTP it speaks S3, Azure, Backblaze B2, Google Drive, Dropbox and more, with Cryptomator encryption on top. If your day revolves around cloud buckets, keep it — honestly.

If your day revolves around servers — hosting, a NAS, a VPS, a Raspberry Pi — Upstream trades that breadth for depth: a dual-pane view with your local disk always in sight, a concurrent transfer queue with automatic resume, folder sync with a dry-run preview, and a 100% Swift & SwiftNIO engine.

Should you switch from Cyberduck?

If you connect to S3, Azure, Backblaze or Google Drive, no — keep Cyberduck, nothing at this price replaces it. Switch if your work is servers, and a single-pane browser plus a separate paid app for sync is costing you time.

Cyberduck and Upstream are not really competing for the same job. Cyberduck is a multi-protocol browser: its value is that one window reaches almost anything with an address, from an FTP server to a Dropbox account. That breadth is the whole point, and it is why it stays installed on a lot of Macs.

Upstream gives up all of it. Three protocols — FTP, FTPS, SFTP — and everything else spent on depth: two panes instead of one, a transfer queue that resumes, sync with a preview built into the app. If your day is hosting, a VPS, a NAS or a Raspberry Pi, that trade is worth making. If your day is cloud buckets, it plainly is not.

Upstream vs Cyberduck, feature by feature

An honest snapshot — a ✓ means the feature ships today, notes mark the differences that matter.

FeatureUpstreamCyberduck
PriceFree · FULL $29.99 once (US; varies by store)Free, open source (donation key)
FTP, FTPS & SFTP✓✓
Cloud storage (S3, Azure, B2, Drive…)—✓
Dual-pane local + remote view✓Single-pane browser
Engine100% Swift & SwiftNIOJava core, Cocoa UI
Concurrent queue with auto-resume✓Transfers window
Folder sync with dry-run previewFULLSync via Mountain Duck (paid app)
Passwords in the macOS Keychain✓✓
⌘K command paletteFULL—
Client-side encryption (Cryptomator)—✓
Windows version—✓
Import sites from FileZilla / SSH configFULL—

Where Cyberduck is still the right choice

  • You connect to cloud storage — S3, Azure, Backblaze, Google Drive, Dropbox — not just servers.
  • You want Cryptomator client-side encryption for what you upload.
  • You need the same tool on Windows, or you prefer open source end to end.

Where Upstream pulls ahead for server work

  • Dual-pane layout: local and remote side by side, with drag & drop between panes and Finder.
  • A transfer queue built for big jobs — configurable parallelism, exponential-backoff retries, automatic resume.
  • Folder sync with a color-coded dry-run preview, built in (no second app to buy).
  • Native Swift & SwiftNIO throughout — no Java runtime under the hood.
  • ⌘K palette, tabs and fuzzy search to jump between dozens of servers without touching the mouse.

What actually changes day to day

Four differences you notice within the first week — and the reasoning behind each.

One pane becomes two

Cyberduck shows you the server. Your local side is the Finder, which means the loop is: find the window, arrange it next to Cyberduck, drag across, lose the arrangement the next time you connect. It works, and it stops working well the moment you are comparing two directory trees.

Upstream puts local and remote side by side permanently, each pane with its own history, filter and starting path. You can save a local folder per site, so opening a server also opens the project it belongs to — which is most of the setup work you would otherwise redo every session.

A Swift engine instead of a Java core

Cyberduck’s interface is Cocoa, but the machinery underneath is Java — a design that has served it well for twenty years and is the reason the same protocol support runs on Windows too. The visible cost is a runtime to launch and carry.

Upstream is Swift and SwiftNIO end to end, with no runtime beneath it. In practice that shows up as launch time and memory rather than raw throughput: on a single large file both clients will saturate the same link.

Sync without buying a second app

Cyberduck itself does not sync folders on a schedule or in one action — that is Mountain Duck, a separate paid app from the same developer, which mounts remote storage as a disk and syncs it. Excellent software, and a second purchase for something many people assume is in the client.

In Upstream, sync is an operation inside the app: pick a direction and it shows a colour-coded preview of every file it would upload, overwrite or delete before anything happens. Syncing folders over FTP walks through it, and uploading a website covers the deploy case.

A queue built for jobs that fail halfway

Both clients transfer concurrently and both have a transfers window. The difference shows when a connection drops mid-job: Upstream’s queue retries with exponential backoff and resumes, so a failed 4 GB upload continues from where it stopped rather than starting over.

Parallelism is also configurable per site, which matters on shared hosts that throttle or drop connections when too many open at once — a common cause of the 421 and 425 errors people blame on the client rather than the server.

Common questions

Does Upstream support S3 or Google Drive like Cyberduck?
No. Upstream is deliberately limited to FTP, FTPS and SFTP so those three protocols work flawlessly. For cloud buckets, Cyberduck remains an excellent choice.
Is Upstream free like Cyberduck?
The core is free with no limits. FULL — folder sync, watch-mode editing, SSH keys, tabs, ⌘K — is a one-time $29.99 purchase (price varies by App Store country), similar in spirit to Cyberduck’s registration key but with a defined feature set.
Which one is faster for FTP and SFTP?
Both are capable. Upstream’s engine is built on SwiftNIO with a concurrent queue and configurable parallelism, which shines on large recursive transfers to ordinary FTP/SFTP servers.
What is the best Cyberduck alternative for Mac?
For FTP, FTPS and SFTP work, Upstream is the closer fit: dual-pane, native Swift, folder sync with a dry-run preview, no Java runtime. For cloud storage there is no real alternative to Cyberduck at its price — it is the broadest free client on the Mac, and this page says so plainly.
Is Cyberduck free?
Yes. Cyberduck is open source and free from its website, with a donation prompt; the Mac App Store build is paid and funds development. Upstream’s core is free with no limits, and FULL is a one-time $29.99 In-App Purchase (price varies by App Store country).
Does Cyberduck have a dual-pane view?
No. Cyberduck is a single-pane remote browser — you work on the server side and drag to and from the Finder. Upstream shows local and remote side by side, with drag & drop between the two panes as well as with the Finder.
Can Upstream import my Cyberduck bookmarks?
Not directly. Cyberduck writes one .duck plist per bookmark rather than a single list file, so there is no one-click importer. If your servers are SSH-based, Import ▸ From SSH config covers them in one step; otherwise the FileZilla XML importer is the other supported route.

Try Upstream free, decide later

The core is free forever — unlimited FTP, FTPS and SFTP sites, the concurrent queue, Quick Look and full file management. No trial clock, no subscription.

Download on the Mac App Store

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