PuTTY is one of those pieces of software that crossed the line from old utility to permanent infrastructure so quietly that millions of people barely noticed. It started in the 1990s, survived multiple generations of Windows, and in 2026 its official download page still looks like a competent engineer made a website and then refused to let anybody ruin it.
Visit the official PuTTY download page.
Simon Tatham began the project in the summer of 1996 because the Windows terminal programs he was using had poor or inconsistent terminal emulation. The first version was a private Telnet client called STel.
By 1998, remote systems were increasingly moving toward SSH. Tatham added an SSH-1 backend, generalized the networking code and renamed the program PuTTY. In early 1999 he put it on the Web for public download.
The first public distribution was almost comically small by today’s standards: one executable and a web page. No installer. No giant framework. No account system. Download putty.exe and run it.
The little executable grew a family
Contributors and real-world needs gradually expanded PuTTY into a suite. PSCP added secure file copying. Later came Plink, the Pageant authentication agent and PuTTYgen for key generation. SSH-2 support followed as the protocol became necessary.
The development history is refreshingly unromantic. Tatham has written that there was little grand roadmap. Features usually appeared because he needed them or because somebody else wrote them and sent a patch.
That is a very old open-source growth pattern: solve an itch, publish the code, discover that thousands of other people have the same itch.
Still shipping in 2026
The current release is PuTTY 0.85, dated August 16, 2026. The download page still provides individual executables, MSI installers, source archives, signatures, documentation and checksum files. It supports modern 64-bit x86 and Arm systems while still exposing artifacts from its long history.
The project also keeps old release pages online. A 1999 release page, for example, remains available but now carries a security warning explaining that known vulnerabilities were fixed in later versions. That is preservation done responsibly: the old bits remain visible without pretending they are safe choices today.
Even the icons carry history. Tatham has explained that their limited palette came from the days when 16-color GUI conventions mattered, and that the team has repeatedly declined offers to modernize them beyond recognition. He calls the style “reassuringly old-fashioned.”
That phrase could describe the whole project.
PuTTY’s value to the Ancient Web is not that it is abandoned. It is the opposite. It demonstrates what happens when old software and its old-style website remain maintained instead of being replaced every few years for cosmetic reasons.
Download or inspect the current PuTTY release. The page itself is nearly as durable as the program.