If you are the average IRC Joe who's familiar with the IRC enviroment and its commands and just wants a simple IRC client with a clean interface and some useful features, then AthenaIRC is the client you want to use, according to its web page. Also available as a Carbon release for MacOS X. The web site indicates that Athena replaces RealIRC, but doesn't have as many features yet.
platform: Mac OS, OS X
homepage: http://www.chipersoft.com/athena/
screenshots: http://www.chipersoft.com/athena/screenshots/AthenaX.jpg
This is a nice looking package, with a very different feel to the others. There are a few small cosmetic problems with the windows not tiling properly, but it seems to be the most stable of all the Mac clients I've used and has a good 'Mac' feel to it. It also offers some form of 'Bot control, for those who like that kind of thing, and it does let you connect to multiple servers, or even different networks.
platform: Mac OS
homepage: http://www.macirc.com/
Almost unique amongst IRC clients, ChatNet provides filtering of both channels and content for naughty words during sessions; surely a strong selling point for concerned parents and educators. This seems a well thought out system incorporating password protection. The screens are informative and really quite intuitive to use and the application seems very stable. Con's? Well, I'm not keen on having yet another system extension installed by ChatNET, but maybe that's OK for you.
platform: Mac OS
homepage: http://www.elsinc.com
A Cocoa-based Internet Relay Chat Client. IRCStep can connect to multiple servers at a time seamlessly. (You can display multiple channels of multiple servers on any number of windows with discretionally combinations.) IRCStep is ready to firewall, via SOCKS 5 or NAT. Includes Japanese support.
platform: Mac OS X
homepage: http://www.virtualmemory.net/~aova/next/ircstep/
A small IRC client with multiple connections, DCC, etc., but not as much scripting support as ircle.
platform: Mac OS
homepage: http://www.macirc.com
download: ftp://ftp.macirc.com/pub/
A fast and configurable MacOS client; supports plugins, and is available for free including source under the GNU Public License.
platform: Mac OS
homepage: http://www.shadowirc.com/
download: http://www.shadowirc.com/download.html
An easy to use IRC chat client distribuetd under the Gnu Pubilc License, originally based on ircle 1.5.
platform: Mac OS
homepage: http://www.smircle.de/
download: http://www.smircle.de/download.html
A powerful and up to date Macintosh IRC client. Hey, it even does drag and drop! Fewer scripts available than for ircle, and it uses more memory, but some people prefer its appearance and interface.
platform: Mac OS
homepage: http://www.snak.com/Snak.html
download: http://www.snak.com/SnakDownload.html
The most popular IRC client for Windows. See also www.mircx.com for scripting support.
platform: Microsoft Windows
homepage: http://www.mirc.com
IRCX-compatible (for use with MSN) and scriptable. Supports voice (audio), chess, fileserver and many more features. The shareware version of TurboIRC limits alias and event number to 50, according to the home page. Greek, German and French versions available as well as English, with Dutch promised. See also TurboIRC 2000.
platform: Microsoft Windows
homepage: http://www.turboirc.com/3/1.htm
download: http://www.turboirc.com/3/3.htm
screenshots: http://www.turboirc.com/3/9.htm
Skinnable; Combines MSN Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ and IRC in a single program. There is a free download but no source.
platform: Microsoft Windows
homepage: http://www.trillian.cc/
download: http://www.trillian.cc/download.html
Features include a semi-compiled C-like scripting language, and a JPEG picture viewer that displays pictures as they are received.
Platform: Windows 95, 98, NT, or 2000
Homepage: http://www.leafdigital.com/Software/leafChat/
Uses DLLs rather than scripting to increase speed and lower processor demand.
Platform: Windows9x and NT
Homepage: http://www.klient.com/
Multiple chat window and server support. Allows scripts. Has MP3 player built in, and many other entertaining features.
Platform: Windows
Homepage: http://www.team-nexgen.com/scripts.shtml
Free Visual basic client, lots of features and you can download the source; might be a good way to learn about sockets, networking, IRC and object-oriented programming in Visual Basic.
platform: Microsoft Windows
homepage: http://ref.val.circle.serveirc.com
screenshots: http://ref.val.circle.serveirc.com/circle/view_announcements.asp#4
Keirc is a powerful Internet Relay Chat client program written for KDE. It contains virtually all of the features that you would expect in an IRC client, multiple windows session such as server message, channel message, private message query, DCC chat query, DCC send/get, TCL scripting, and more with a simple mouse operations. The interface appears from the screenshots to be uglier than the Gtk+ IRC client, X-Chat.
platform: Unix with the X Window System (XFree86, CDE, etc.)
homepage: http://www.tedi-h.com/keirc/
screenshots: http://www.tedi-h.com/keirc/screenshots.html
X-Chat is a fully featured IRC client by Peter Zelezny; it uses the GTK toolkit and can be compiled to use GNOME and PERL scripting. X-Chat is said to be very similar to the Amiga AmIRC IRC client.
platform: Unix with the X Window System (XFree86, CDE, etc.)
homepage: http://www.xchat.org/
download: http://www.xchat.org/download.html
A derivative of ircII and EPIC, with many features and good support for channel operators and IRC opers, BitchX is favoured by many more experienced IRC users. There is also a version with support for making Gtk+ (Gnome) menus, although it does not compare with X-chat for GUI friendliness. Scripts are at scripts.bitchx.com, and Ankh has ome documentation (and a script) at www.holoweb.net/~liam/bx/.
platform: Unix (Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, etc.)
homepage: http://www.bitchx.com/
download: http://www.bitchx.org/download.html
An irc client for emacs
platform: Unix (Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, etc.)
homepage: http://www.cs.hut.fi/pub/irchat/
download: ftp://ftp.cs.hut.fi/pub/irchat/