Possibly the most common question: which is faster for transfers?

Given all details on this page. What makes FTP faster:

• No added meta-data in the sent files, just the raw binary
• Never chunked encoding “overhead”

What makes HTTP faster:

• reusing existing persistent connections make better TCP performance
• pipelining makes asking for multiple files from the same server faster
• (automatic) compression makes less data get sent
• no command/response flow minimizes extra round-trips

Ultimately the net outcome of course differ depending on specific details, but I would say that for single-shot static files, you won’t be able to measure a difference. For a single shot small file, you might get it faster with FTP (unless the server is at a long round-trip distance). When getting multiple files, HTTP should be the faster one.