Command-line tool

socat

brew/socat

Checked 25 Oct 2026, 21:09 UTC · Listing refreshed from Homebrew, winget, npm, Scoop and cargo; npm packages checked against OSV.dev

SOcket CAT: netcat on steroids

Website

At a glance

Type

Command-line tool

Install on

macOS, Linux

Last checked

25 Oct 2026, 21:09 UTC

Install it

macOS

brew install socat

Linux

brew install socat

Listen to a port, wait for an incoming connection, and transfer data to STDIO

sudo socat - TCP-LISTEN:8080,fork

Listen on a port using SSL and print to `stdout`

sudo socat OPENSSL-LISTEN:4433,reuseaddr,cert=./cert.pem,cafile=./ca.cert.pem,key=./key.pem,verify=0 STDOUT

Create a connection to a host and port, transfer data in STDIO to connected host

sudo socat - TCP4:www.example.com:80

Related command-line tools

• hoox
  Git hooks on steroids.
• netcat
  Utility for managing network connections
• Winix NetCat
  Winix NetCat (Windows package; no description in the winget index) developer-tools cli portable network tls…
• nef
  Steroids for Xcode Playgrounds
• pwncat
  Netcat with FW/IDS/IPS evasion, self-inject-, bind- and reverse shell
• socket_vmnet
  Daemon to provide vmnet.framework support for rootless QEMU
• @socketsecurity/socket-patch
  CLI tool and schema library for applying security patches to dependencies security patch cli dependencies
• nanomsg
  Socket library in C

Listing text is written by the maker; AptLynx lists tools and does not vouch for them. Find another tool · Browse by topic · For agents