Comparison of Internet Relay Chat clients
The following tables compare general and technical information between a number of IRC client programs which have been discussed in independent published literature.
Basic general information about the clients: creator/company, license etc. Clients listed on a light purple background are no longer in active development.
(HexChat is free of charge)
A brief overview of the release history.
2.42 (June 22, 2014)
Lion
2.38 (September 12, 2013)
The operating systems on which the clients can run natively (without emulation).
Unix and Unix-like operating systems:
What IRC related protocols and standards are supported by each client.
Information on what features each of the clients support.
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Wikipedia