UltraEdit Alternatives for Huge Files, Hex and FTP

UltraEdit still works and is still for sale. The UltraEdit homepage promotes UE 2026.1 for Windows, macOS and Linux and says it opens 10GB+ files that freeze basic editors. Its other headline features are column/block mode, hex tools and integrated FTP, SSH and Telnet.

Cost is the usual reason people look elsewhere. The pricing page lists only subscriptions on its main table. UltraEdit Core is $99.95 a year and Enterprise is $119.95 a year. Perpetual licences exist and include one year of maintenance, but UltraEdit does not publish their price. The Mac build also runs a version behind: the Mac and Linux change log shows 2025.0, build 180, dated October 29, 2026.

The eight picks below are matched to those four jobs: big files, column editing, hex and remote files. Prices come from each vendor's own page as of November 6, 2026.

Our method is on How we review tools.

Quick comparison

EmEditor

Emurasoft built EmEditor around the job that sells most UltraEdit licences: files too big for anything else. Its large file page says files up to 16 TB or 1,099 billion lines open in full with little memory. Past that, the Large File Controller loads one section at a time and shows how much memory it is using. Version 26.4 shipped on November 5, 2026.

Vertical editing and multiple selections handle column work, and Binary Editing sits in the text editing feature list. Professional adds CSV tools such as sort by column and joins, handy when the giant file is a database export. After the 7-day Professional trial it drops to EmEditor Free instead of expiring.

Best for: Windows users whose main UltraEdit job is opening multi-gigabyte logs, dumps or CSV exports.

Pricing:

• Professional monthly: $6 per month
• Professional annual: $60 for the first year, then $45 per year
• EmEditor Free: home or school use only, no Large File Controller or CSV tools

Watch out for:

• There is no built-in FTP or SFTP client, so remote files need a separate tool such as WinSCP.
• It is still a subscription. The buy page sells no perpetual licence, so you trade one yearly bill for a smaller one. Windows only.

Official site: EmEditor.

Notepad++

The free route on Windows is Notepad++ 8.9.9 plus two plugins. Alt and drag starts a column selection, as does Alt+Shift with the arrow keys. Edit > Column Editor then fills that selection with text or a number sequence in decimal, hex, octal or binary, which covers most of what UltraEdit's column mode gets used for.

For remote files, NppFTP handles FTP, FTPS, FTPES and SFTP, and version 0.30.23 came out in September 2026. Hex editing comes from the HEX-Editor plugin, whose 0.9.14 release in October 2025 added initial dark mode. Readers who mostly want a lighter Notepad-style tool can compare more options in our Notepad++ alternatives.

Best for: Windows users who want column editing, FTP and hex at no cost and accept plugins.

Pricing:

• Free, open source (GPL)
• NppFTP and HEX-Editor are free, open source plugins

Watch out for:

• Big files lose features. Once a file passes the size you set under Preferences > Performance, syntax highlighting goes off, and word wrap, auto-completion and brace matching can go with it.
• Windows only, and FTP and hex depend on outside developers who release on their own schedule.

Official site: Notepad++. Our listing: Notepad++.

Sublime Text

Sublime Text answers the subscription complaint head on. A personal licence is $99 once with 3 years of updates, and one key covers every computer and operating system you use, according to the store page. Build 4215 from September 25, 2026 runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, including ARM64 Linux.

Multiple selections are central to how it edits, so column-style changes across many lines take a few keystrokes. It feels quick on normal source files and config files. FTP is not built in, and remote work goes through the third-party SFTP package, which is licensed separately.

Best for: Developers on mixed Windows, Mac and Linux machines who want to pay once instead of every year.

Pricing:

• Personal: $99 one-time, includes 3 years of updates
• Business: $65 per seat per year for 1 to 10 seats, lower per seat at higher counts
• Free evaluation; a licence is required for continued use

Watch out for:

• Huge files are not its strength. In a 2018 Sublime Forum thread, a 9 GB file stalled at about 20% loaded for hours on a laptop.
• A March 2024 forum thread about the SFTP package reports failed connections and slow support, and its developer promised an OpenSSH compatibility update.

Official site: Sublime Text. Our listing: Sublime Text.

Visual Studio Code

Microsoft's own extensions fill most of UltraEdit's feature list in VS Code, which is free on Windows, macOS and Linux. The Hex Editor extension, published by Microsoft with more than 7.5 million installs, edits raw bytes with undo and redo and adds a data inspector that reads values as different types. Box selection is Shift+Alt and drag, per the editing docs.

For servers, Remote-SSH installs VS Code Server on the remote machine, so search, terminals and extensions run there. That is closer to UltraEdit's SSH and Telnet tools than to its FTP client. Readers who want something lighter can compare editors in our VS Code alternatives.

Best for: Developers who want hex, column and remote editing in one free editor and are fine adding extensions.

Pricing:

• Free for private and commercial use
• Microsoft's Hex Editor extension is free

Watch out for:

• FTP-only hosting is a poor fit. The Remote-SSH FAQ says Remote Development was not designed for hosts with only SFTP or FTP access and suggests an SFTP extension instead.
• Remote hosts need at least 1 GB of RAM (2 GB recommended), and Alpine and other non-glibc Linux distributions are not supported.

Official site: Visual Studio Code. Our listing: Visual Studio Code.

010 Editor

SweetScape sells 010 Editor as a hex editor first and a text editor second, which suits readers who bought UltraEdit for hex mode. Binary Templates parse a file into a tree of named fields, written in C-like syntax with if, for and while statements. Templates can run on their own when a file opens, and an online repository holds ready-made ones. Version 17.0.1 is current.

The text side is stronger than in most hex tools. Ctrl and drag gives column selection, Tree-sitter highlighting covers more than 45 syntaxes, and the product page claims huge file support of 50 GB+. Trials run on Windows 11 and 10, macOS and Linux.

Best for: Reverse engineers and firmware or forensics work, plus anyone who reads binary file formats daily.

Pricing:

• Home/Academic: $59.95 per user, perpetual
• Commercial: $149.95 per user, perpetual
• One year of upgrades and support included; upgrade/maintenance is $24.95 (home) or $49.95 (commercial)

Watch out for:

• No FTP or remote editing appears on the product page. It opens local files, drives, partitions and process memory.
• The $59.95 licence covers home or academic use only. Work use needs the $149.95 commercial licence.

Official site: 010 Editor.

BBEdit

Mac users who ran UltraEdit's macOS build get a native app with remote editing included. The feature comparison lists "extensive FTP and SFTP support" and rectangular, columnar selections in free mode as well as the licensed version. BBEdit 16.1 is built for Intel and Apple silicon.

Paying adds text factories, Git and Subversion support, and shell worksheets that run Unix commands from an editable window. When the 30-day trial ends, the app keeps running in free mode with no nag screens.

Best for: Mac users who edit files on servers and want FTP, SFTP and column selection without paying.

Pricing:

• New licence: $59.99
• Upgrade from 15.x: $29.99; from 14.x or earlier: $39.99
• Free mode after the 30-day trial

Watch out for:

• Mac only, and BBEdit 16 needs macOS 14.0 or later.
• Hex editing is missing from the comparison chart, so binary files still need a second app such as ImHex.

Official site: BBEdit. Our listing: BBEdit.

Vim

On most Linux and Unix servers Vim is already installed, shipped as vi. Ctrl-V starts a blockwise selection, which is Vim's column mode. The bundled netrw plugin reads and writes ftp://, sftp:// and scp:// paths, so :e sftp://host/path opens a remote file in a normal buffer.

Hex editing goes through xxd. The hex-editing tip shows autocommands that turn a binary file into an xxd dump on open and convert it back on save, and vim -b opens any file in binary mode. Vim 9.2, released February 14, 2026, added Wayland support and a GTK 4 GUI.

Best for: Sysadmins and terminal users who edit files over SSH and want one free tool on every server.

Pricing:

• Free, charityware

Watch out for:

• Undo history and registers are held in RAM, according to the limits section of the docs, so a big substitution across a multi-gigabyte file can use a lot of memory.

Official site: Vim.

ImHex

For UltraEdit's hex mode at no cost, ImHex is the open source pick. A custom pattern language describes file structures in C-like syntax, the data inspector reads bytes as many types, and a Capstone-based disassembler covers most CPU architectures. Diffing highlights changes between two data sources.

It also loads files from remote servers over SSH and SFTP, useful for checking a binary on a server without copying it down first. Most of the code is GPLv2. Release 1.38.1 arrived on December 21, 2025 with Windows installer and data inspector fixes.

Best for: Reverse engineering and binary analysis without a licence fee.

Pricing:

• Free, open source (GPLv2; plugin libraries LGPLv2.1)

Watch out for:

• It needs a GPU with OpenGL 3.0. The README offers -NoGPU builds for Windows and macOS but warns they can be much slower.
• macOS builds require macOS 15 Sequoia or later.

Official site: ImHex.

How to choose

When to stay with UltraEdit

Keep UltraEdit if you use several of its parts together: big files, column mode, hex and FTP or SSH in one window, plus UltraCompare, which the Core plan includes. No single pick here does all of that on Windows without plugins. If FTP is the reason you renew, check your plan, since UltraFTP comes only with Enterprise. If the yearly bill is the problem, ask about a perpetual licence; the pricing page says each one includes a year of maintenance.

Frequently asked questions