BURSUcm vs Xshell
Feature availability is compared against each product's permanent free tier where one exists. Paid-only capabilities are marked Paid; a product without a permanent free edition is marked as such.
| Product | Price | Free edition |
|---|---|---|
| Xshell NetSarang | $119 per user, a perpetual licence with a year of maintenance; Xftp for files is sold separately | Free for home and school only; any business use needs a licence |
| BURSUcm | Free one edition, no per-user licence | Everything: unlimited connections, tunnels, users and devices; BURSUcloud sync with fair-use limits per account |
- Yes
- Limited
- Paid
- Partly
- No
| Feature | Xshell $119 perpetual | BURSUcm Free |
|---|---|---|
| Price and licence | ||
| Free for business use | No Home and school only | Yes |
| Unlimited saved connections in the free version | Yes Under the non-commercial licence | Yes |
| Platforms | ||
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | No | Yes |
| Linux | No | Yes |
| Android and iOS apps | No | Yes Free apps that open the same BURSUcloud catalog |
| Protocols | ||
| SSH and Telnet | Yes | Yes |
| RDP remote desktop | Yes RDP sessions in tabs since Xshell 8 | Yes Built-in engine with H.264, multi-monitor and RD Gateway |
| VNC | No | Yes |
| Apple Remote Desktop with High Performance (Apple silicon Macs) | No | Yes AppleRD: GPU video and the Mac's audio; the Mac's host key verified before the password |
| WinRM / PowerShell on Windows servers | No | Yes |
| SFTP and FTP file transfer | Partly Xftp, a separate product | Yes File panel beside the terminal, plus a two-pane manager |
| Built-in web browser tab | No | Yes A full browser with downloads; desktop apps |
| Jump hosts and SSH tunnels | Yes | Yes ProxyJump chains; local, remote and SOCKS5 tunnels |
| Cloud and team | ||
| Sync across devices | No | Yes BURSUcloud; the server stores ciphertext only |
| Team sharing with per-folder rights | No | Yes Read, edit and reveal-password rights per folder |
| Encrypted credential vault | Yes | Yes AES-256-GCM under a master password; TOTP codes too |
| Passwords from KeePass, 1Password or Bitwarden | No | Yes Imports all three, one-time codes included; desktop apps |
| Shared database you host yourself | No | Yes SQLite locally, your own PostgreSQL, or BURSUcloud |
| AI | ||
| AI assistant acts inside live sessions | No | Yes SSH and WinRM, and RDP on Windows: reads the output, runs commands with your approval |
| Your own API key or a local model | No | Yes OpenAI, Gemini, Claude, DeepSeek; Ollama, LM Studio, llama.cpp; one checkbox turns AI off |
| Specialised | ||
| Mosh (roaming shell) | No | No |
| Serial console | Yes | Yes Windows, Linux and macOS apps |
| S3 and WebDAV storage | No | No |
| MCP integration | No | No |
| Native Kubernetes | No | No |
Everything you need is included free. Download BURSUcm See the product tour
Prices and limits were read from the vendors' public pages on 2026-10-17 and may have changed since; product names belong to their owners. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.