Basic FTP clients attach to numbers of operating systems, including Windows, DOS, Linux and Unix. All the same, numerous enhanced clients come available often when shareware/freeware for Windows and when free software for Unix-like systems. Numerous modern web browsers have built-in FTP clients besides (though an FTP client might function better for personal FTP servers than the web browser).

A few operating systems including recently versions of Windows, Mac OS X or Linux (e.g. by having FUSE) can mount FTP servers as virtual causes directly in the operating technique, which can be gentler or even extra handy for a select few users than applying a specialised client.

Desktop environments like KDE or Gnome integrate FTP through KIO or GNOME VFS.