Comparison of Internet Relay Chat clients

The following tables compare general and technical information between a number of IRC client programs. Please see the individual products pages for more information. This page is does not include everything and may not be current.
General.
Basic general information about the notableclients: creator/company, license, etc. Clients listed on a light purple background are no longer in active development.
Release history.
A brief overview of the release history.
Operating system support.
The operating systems on which the clients can run natively (without emulation).
Unix and Unix-like operating systems:
Protocol support.
What IRC related protocols and standards are supported by each client.
Direct Client-to-Client (DCC) support.
The Direct Client-to-Client Protocol (DCC) has been the primary method of establishing connections directly between IRC clients for a long time now. Once established, DCC connections bypass the IRC network and servers, allowing for all sorts of data to be transferred between clients including files and direct chat sessions.
IRCv3 Support.
This software is compliant natively; other software may be compliant with extensions.
IRCv3 SASL Mechanisms.
IRC SASL authentication primarily uses the same mechanisms as SASL in other protocols. Most commonly:
Features.
Information on what features each of the clients support.