Clients
This table compares the features of the different clients.
Feature key
- Wallet Security
- How well the client protects your private keys from people with access to the machine the wallet is stored on. The private keys can be encrypted, for example.
- Network Security
- Clients which more fully implement the Bitcoin network protocol are safer -- they can't be as easily tricked by powerful attackers. A client which fully implements the protocol will always use the correct block chain and will never allow double-spends or invalid transactions to exist in the block chain under any circumstances. Clients which only partially implement the protocol typically trust that 50% or more of the network's mining power is honest. Some clients trust one or more remote servers to protect them from double-spends and other network attacks.
- Setup Time
- Some clients require that you download and verify a large amount of data before you can send or receive BTC.
- Maturity
- When the project was started.
Table
| Client | Armory | Bitcoin Wallet | Bitcoin-Qt | bitcoind | Electrum | MultiBit | My Wallet |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Get Started | Download | Download | Download | Download | Download | Download | eWallet |
| Audience | Power users | End-users | End-users | Programmers | Power users | End-users | Everyone |
| Wallet Security | Encryption | Isolated | Encryption | Encryption | Encryption | None | Encryption |
| Network Security | Addon | Partial | Full | Full | Minimal | Partial | Remote |
| Backups | One-time | Manual | Manual | Manual | Memorized | No | Automatic |
| Setup Time | Varies | 1 hour | Hours | Hours | Minutes | 1 hour | Minutes |
| Disk Space | 2+ GB | 30 MB | 2+ GB | 2+ GB | 5 MB | 50 MB | None |
| Maturity | Jul 2011 | Mar 2011 | May 2011 | Aug 2009 | Nov 2011 | Jul 2011 | Dec 2011 |
| License | AGPLv3 | GPLv3 | MIT | MIT | GPLv3 | MIT | BSD* |
| Multi-user | Multi-wallet | No | No | Virtual accounts | No | Multi-wallet | Yes |
| Available For |   |
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