Assessing your data transfer requirements and priorities will help you identify suitable tools for use in your transfer. However, multiple tools might meet the strict needs of your data transfer. In these cases, how might you decide which data transfer tool to use? If some of your options are tools you have not used before, you should estimate the time it will take you to install and configure each tool and combine those estimates with the expected data transfer time when making your choice.

If the data you are moving is less than 2 GB in size and you are working with a good connection, the transfer time will be relatively short and your choice of transfer program is not as important. You will probably want to use a simple tool that requires little configuration, like SCP or SFTP, rather than investing setup time in a new tool.

For larger amounts of data, tools like Globus and rclone, which copy data using multiple parallel streams, are likely to transfer data the fastest. However, the first time you use these tools you many need to install software and/or configure your connection credentials for one or more endpoints of the transfer, which can take some time. This investment may only be worthwhile if you have a lot of data to transfer or if you plan to use that tool for similar transfers in the future.