Which is the best LN software? I know that software for the Lightning Network can only be used with testnet and not with real Bitcoin yet.

I'm trying to choose one LN software among C-Lightning, ACINQ, AmikoPay, Thunder, Lit and Lnd in order to study and test it. What are the main differences between them?

Thank you!
Obivously, the question and this answer are subjective based on personal experiences. I've only used LND and C-Lightning, which are arguably the most popular. The following is a summary of my experiences:

LND

LND is built in GO and requires a special version of Bitcoin built in GO as well. The install process is well documented and pretty straightforward. However, I had issues with configuring Glide, which is required to install the dependencies. Additionally, I was hesitant to rely on the GO version of Bitcoin to stay supported. Supposedly, there's a pull request to make the changes needed in the Core version, but still... I considered it a risk. Once past the dependency issues, LND worked great. I would have continued using it, but I wanted to try other implementations.

C-Lightning

Since I run Core's version of Bitcoin and prefer my daemons to be in C (again, an objective position based on personal experiences), I tried C-Lightning next. There weren't any issues with installation on Ubuntu and it's been purring along since. The only problems I've had are around documentation, which I'd say LND has done a slightly better job with so far.



In summary, the above Lightning implementations are great and I would recommend either. Both have fantastic teams behind them and are consistently committing updates.

I ended up sticking with C-Lightning because it had the architecture and dependencies I'm most comfortable with and have the most experience with (Bitcoin Core and C). Since both implementations are still a work in progress and documentation is ongoing, I find myself continuously in the code figuring out errors and options. If I was more of a GO developer, I'd probably choose LND.