[ksherlock]

They both can send and retrieve files, though sftp is usually interactive and scp (aside from the password) not so much.

If you want to retrieve a file without renaming it, sftp url-with-path-where-path-is-an-existing-file will copy that one file, non-interactively.

To rename or put a file (non-interactively), you need to do something like echo 'get/put remote-path local-path' | sftp ...