FileZilla Pro is a professional file transfer client for Windows, macOS, and Debian Linux, engineered for teams that move data across traditional servers and modern cloud platforms inside a single workflow. This page documents every feature the application ships with, organized by the work you actually do with it. For a five-minute visual overview, the FileZilla Pro in a Nutshell tutorial below covers the main capabilities end to end.
Who FileZilla Pro Is Built For
FileZilla Pro targets users whose daily work involves multi-endpoint file operations: developers deploying builds to staging and production, creative studios pushing large assets to object storage, system administrators managing heterogeneous server fleets, and data teams shuttling datasets between on-prem servers and cloud buckets. The application unifies classical transfer protocols and cloud object-storage APIs inside one consistent interface — copying a file from an SFTP host into an S3 bucket, or from OneDrive into a WebDAV share, uses the same drag-and-drop gesture you’d use inside a local file manager.
Officially supported platforms:
- Windows (64-bit, Windows 10 and later)
- macOS as a universal binary for Intel and Apple Silicon
- Debian Linux, with unofficial compatibility on Ubuntu and other Debian-derived distributions
Transfer Protocols and Authentication
FileZilla Pro speaks every major file transfer protocol used in production environments, with full support for modern authentication and encryption standards.
Classical internet protocols
- FTP — plain-text FTP for legacy systems and testing scenarios where encryption is not required.
- FTPS (FTP over TLS) — explicit and implicit TLS modes, modern TLS versions, and configurable certificate handling.
- SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) — password, keyboard-interactive, and public-key authentication. ED25519, ECDSA, and RSA keys are supported, with passphrase-protected private keys and SSH agent forwarding.
- WebDAV and WebDAV over HTTPS — for Nextcloud, ownCloud, corporate intranets, and any HTTP-based DAV endpoint.
Connection management
- Multiple concurrent connections to the same server, configurable per-site, to maximise throughput on high-latency links.
- Simultaneous multi-server sessions — each remote host lives in its own browsing tab.
- Proxy support for SOCKS4, SOCKS5, and HTTP proxies, including authenticated proxies behind corporate firewalls.
- Keep-alive packets on idle sessions to prevent NAT timeouts during long-running transfers.
- IPv6 support throughout the transfer engine.
Cloud Storage and Enterprise Integrations
Cloud integrations in FileZilla Pro use each provider’s native API rather than a generic WebDAV bridge. That means authentic service behaviour: server-side copy where the protocol supports it, multipart uploads for large files, resumable transfers on object stores, and access to provider-specific metadata.
Object storage
- Amazon S3 — long-lived access keys or temporary credentials, custom regions (including GovCloud), and S3-compatible third-party endpoints.
- Backblaze B2 — application keys with scoped bucket permissions.
- Cloudflare R2 — S3-compatible authentication with R2-specific endpoint handling.
- Google Cloud Storage — OAuth sign-in or service-account JSON.
- Microsoft Azure Blob Storage and Azure File Storage — account keys and Shared Access Signatures (SAS).
- OpenStack Swift and Rackspace Cloud — Keystone authentication with tenant and region selection.
Productivity and consumer cloud
- Google Drive — personal accounts and Google Workspace tenants.
- Dropbox — OAuth with refresh tokens.
- Box — OAuth, including enterprise folder structures.
- Microsoft OneDrive (Personal), OneDrive for Business, and SharePoint — Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) sign-in, compatible with multi-factor authentication and conditional access policies.
Transfer Engine and Queue Management
- Resumable transfers on every protocol that supports byte-range requests — interrupted uploads or downloads pick up exactly where they left off.
- Integrated transfer queue with per-item inspection, reordering, pausing, and prioritisation.
- Per-site and global speed limits for upload and download, including scheduled windows so bulk jobs don’t saturate the office link during working hours.
- Automatic retry for failed transfers with configurable retry counts and back-off.
- Drag-and-drop initiation from the OS file manager directly into a remote pane.
Browsing, Search, and Directory Tools
- Side-by-side local and remote panes with independent navigation, sort, and filter.
- Tabbed browsing — keep multiple connections, or multiple locations inside one connection, open in parallel.
- Remote file search across server-side directory trees with size, date, and name filters.
- Directory comparison highlighting files that exist on only one side, are newer, or differ in size.
- Custom sorting by name, size, modification date, or permission mask.
- Site Manager with nested folders, per-site transfer settings, and colour labels for visual grouping.
Synchronization
- Directory synchronization — one-way or two-way sync between a local folder and a remote location, with rules for handling conflicts.
- Site Synchronization — keep Site Manager entries consistent across multiple workstations so bookmarks and credentials follow you.
- Synchronized browsing — mirror navigation between local and remote panes, so opening a subfolder on one side opens the matching folder on the other automatically.
File Editing, Renaming, and Cleanup
- Edit remote files in place — open a remote file in your configured editor, save, and FileZilla Pro uploads the change automatically.
- Batch rename with regular-expression search-and-replace, number sequences, case transformations, and prefix/suffix rules.
- Automatic character substitution for filenames containing characters the destination filesystem can’t accept — common when moving between Windows, Linux, and object storage with key restrictions.
Logging and Diagnostics
- Detailed message log capturing per-session protocol-level exchanges.
- Adjustable debug verbosity, from warnings only up to full protocol trace.
- Export-ready log files suitable for attaching to support requests.
Internationalization
The interface is localised into more than twenty languages and follows your OS locale by default. Date, size, and number displays respect your system’s regional settings.
Support and Documentation
Every FileZilla Pro license includes access to the dedicated support forum, where requests are handled directly by the FileZilla Pro engineering team. The full manuals are bundled with the application and are also available online, with step-by-step guides for every integration and feature described above.
Video Walkthrough
The tutorial below summarises FileZilla Pro’s main capabilities in a single overview.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which file transfer protocols does FileZilla Pro support?
FileZilla Pro supports FTP, FTPS (over TLS), SFTP (over SSH), and WebDAV, plus native cloud APIs for Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, Microsoft Azure Blob and File, Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2, OpenStack Swift, Rackspace Cloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, and SharePoint.
Does FileZilla Pro run natively on Apple Silicon Macs?
Yes. The macOS build is a universal binary and runs natively on both Intel and Apple Silicon (M-series) hardware.
Can FileZilla Pro transfer files directly between two cloud providers?
Yes. Open a tab for each cloud and drag files between them. Data streams through the local client; server-side copy is used within the same provider when the underlying API supports it.
Is there a command-line version of FileZilla Pro?
The separate FileZilla Pro CLI product covers scripted and automated transfers and is licensed independently of the desktop client.
Does FileZilla Pro support multi-factor authentication for cloud services?
Yes. OAuth-based integrations (Google, Microsoft, Box, Dropbox) go through each provider’s standard sign-in flow, including MFA prompts and conditional access policies where configured.
Does FileZilla Pro resume interrupted uploads and downloads?
Yes, on every protocol that supports byte-range requests. Interrupted transfers resume from the exact point they stopped, both for classical protocols and for cloud object stores.