Best BitTorrent Clients

uTorrent is probably going to win solely based on brand recognition but, i’d really recommend any other torrent client. uTorrent is adware as well a lot of the time these days. I personally use transmission.

Great article and very helpful! I agree with most of it. The only *real* disappointment I have with it is not including Azureus/Vuze. I know you’re just including the ones people recommended most, and so I’m not criticizing you or anything, Mr. Henry (actually, I follow you; you pwn xP). Nonetheless, I switched from the original BitTorrent client to µTorrent, and then I stumbled upon Vuze (back then, called Azureus), and my interest was instantly piqued, partly due to its use of Java (my favorite OOP language and third all-time programming language in general), which I had just started using again at the time after a brief “break” from it while I studied OpenGL and brushed up on x86 Assembly. I still think–and always will–that EVERY serious or professional programmer and software engineer should know at least one variety of Assembly, if not more, and possibly a little machine language, no matter how “good” technology gets. Sorry for the TL;DR tangent (it’s a bad habit lol >.<). Anyway, ever since then, Vuze has been my favorite BitTorrent client, and since Leap was released, I don’t even use Deluge or qBitTorrent any longer. I used to when I first started using Vuze when I just wanted a “quick and dirty” client or as a portable solution on a different system. Vuze not only is written in Java and thus very portable, but it’s also stable, efficient and (IMHO) the most feature-packed client you’ll ever find. My fellow geeks, hackers and power users will understand my excitement, as we *thrive* on tedium and tweaking every, little thing we can haha! So, in summation, if you want quick and dirty transfers, go ahead and use one of the clients listed here. They are mostly adequate, IMO. But if you’re a real geek or hacker and don’t have a S ... L ... O ... W box, do yourself a favor and at *least* check out Vuze. =) Thanks for the article, Mr. Henry!

Do people actually refer to uTorrent as micro-torrent or as 'u'-torrent? I use it on my windows PC which does most downloading, but on my everyday mac its transmission all the way.

The thing I love about Vuze is the streaming function to your TV. It can play most files (including mutliple soundtracks and subs) very easily and with high quality. Definately beats hooking up your TV as a second screen. Sometimes it doesn’t work though so I hope that VLC to Chromecast function is released soon.

I using it right now (and have since I switched from uTorrent ages ago), but I’m going to switch to whatever wins this top 10. Vuze has become bloated with a lot of adware and force/deceptive installation of crappy software and constantly tries to force you into using itself as a media player.

Hope you’re excited for another bloated client with a bunch of crapware and deception since uTorrent won. Just get Deluge, I’ve tried all the ones on this list and it’s still the best.

I don't torrent, but I'm curious why so many LH-ers do. I thought it's possible to track/record your ip address if you use torrent. So, say, you download/shared a copyrighted movie/song/etc., the publisher could theoretically track you based on your ip address. Isn't that a huge risk for something so inconsequential?

Well first off, not everything that's transmitted via the bittorrent protocol is illegal. Secondly, there are sites/trackers the government doesn't exactly know about. So they know Demonoid and TPB, but not some of the others.

The number of people prosecuted for filesharing versus the number of people that do it is almost inconsequential. I don't have a link to it off of the top of my head, but I believe it's on the order of the chances of getting hit by a car.

If I'm running Windows, I use uTorrent. Simply put, it's the best. ;) If I'm running Ububtu, I use Deluge, because the interface is similar to uTorrent. I don't like the UI of Transmission.

Both qBittorrent and Deluge are great. I switched to these two after dropping uTorrent, and have never looked back. I tried Transmission, but I find that it’s a bit too barebones for my taste.

I prefer Utorrent, but Transmission is an excellent alternative if you use linux os like Ubuntu.

utorrent has had this problem for awhile now where download speeds would just go to shit. All settings are good and all but oddly enough the speeds just die out to some times 200kb/s. Might be saying there are no seeders and such for the torrent but if I use Deluge I instantly jump to 7mb/s so something tells me it’s the program itself. Also I noticed utorrent eats up a lot of resources. I used the program a lot but gave up on it a few months ago, switched to Deluge and love it.

No no no no no no. People need to back away from uTorrent. Rights to the program was bought out by a different company, and now it’s a bloated mess. Not only is it going the way of Azureus with it’s ads and worthless media capabilities, they’ve been caught stuffing the software with adware and even a bitcoin miner without permission. I’ll vouch for Deluge at this point. It’s super light weight, has all the necessary knick knacks you need, and even has an optional web client.

What the hell is wrong with Deluge and the language selection?! Can’t find an option anywhere. I had to search the internet for a fix and now I have to create a .cmd file to use just because they have some shitty bug? Leave it in english if you don’t know how to write code for localisations. A program is supposed to make your life easier not to annoy the hell out of you until you manage to get it running. 0.1/5 Uninstalled

A long time Transmission user I recently tried utorrent and was hooked. Aside from dealing with RSS feeds, many sites that would not acknowledge my seeding under Transmission were seeing it under utorrent. I also like Vuse quite a bit except it seems less stable in my experience. I have also used Miro a lot as a torrent client /media manager/player, but the bugginess of that project's torrent client (specifically it reads many torrents as corrupted when other clients are fine with it) finally made me resort to using a separate torrent client, although I still use it as a media manager/player. If only Miro used the utorrent code for their client I would be totally content, or if utorrent added a media managing/playing function...

Can't trust bittorrent anymore. Despite the best efforts of torrent sites to issue commenting features on torrent files, the amount of fake files and trojans that get posted up on the networks are ridiculous. Downloading from mass upload sites, (MegaUpload, FilesServe, MediaFire, MultiUpload), is the future of internet file sharing. Not easy to track either.

I’ve heard that argument for years, and I have yet to get a virus or trojan. Since I use μTorrent I can see the individual files and look for anything that doesn’t make sense, like certain files having strange sizes or a video being packaged with its own “decoder”.

Why would anyone NOT use Utorrent? Its all I ever used. At least before the days of P2P like Limewire. Though I feel WAY safer using UTorrent.

Transmission already comes preinstalled in most versions of Linux... it doesn’t come with a lot of trinkets but it gets the job done.

I use µTorrent on my Windows laptop, but Transmission-daemon coupled with Transmission Remote on my Stora to download constantly.

it has to be utorrent, for the simple fact that it is universally accepted on all private torrent sites' client whitelists, whereas there is an inconsistency in the acceptance of various versions of many of the others.

It’s not accepted on any of my private trackers anymore, save old versions.

I was an avid user of µTorrent, up until right before it went ad-based and became Shitware. Apparently, it’s still Shitware. Since that point, I moved on to Vuze. Then it too became Shitware. From there, I moved on to Deluge and Transmission; the latter if I’m using a Linux client, and the former with Windows. What’s worth mentioning, is that I also pair it up with PeerBlock to assist in security and some privacy, and have a fairly restrictive pfSense firewall set up with pfblockNG actively blocking certain questionable countries... I quite frankly can’t see a reason why anyone would NOT use Deluge. It’s just an all-around awesome client. In the same vein, I can’t see a reason why anyone would feel that ad-ware/deception-ware (and to a lesser degree, general “bloat”) is an acceptable compromise to run a specific torrent software. Especially when totally-free, ad-free, bloat-free, deception-free, bullshit-free, extensible open-source clients are readily available and happy to serve your torrents with efficiency, features, and security. I also can’t believe that µTorrent somehow made the top of this list. Just wow.

I can’t believe people are still using uTorrent, holy shit. After the ad insertion, after the bitcoin mining scandal really? Jeez. Transmission for life!

I think most of the people using it are likely non-technical and don’t understand the implications of the hidden buttcoin miner. I use Deluge.

You don’t have to use the latest crap. I’m still on 1.6 which is almost 10 years old now. Despite its age it still works great and it’s tiny like it’s supposed to be (170kB).

I will say that the best BitTorrent client is whichever one your seedbox uses. That’s another way of saying if you’re using BitTorrent for any more than a handful of files and if you care at all about your seed ratio, then you should get a seedbox. A seedbox gives you an always on BitTorrent server that, typically, has a faster connection than a typical home does. That speeds up the downloads and makes it really easy to seed the hell out of a torrent, which is great for boosting your ratio. Plus, you’re not using your home bandwidth unless you’re actually FTP’ing a file. A happy byproduct is that by using a seedbox, you won't elicit any anti-BitTorrent measures your ISP might impose.

If you are going to use uTorrent, I recommend using the older version 2.2.1 and unchecking the auto-update and check for update buttons. This was back before they had ads and all the sketchy bullshit that infects them now. It is very reliable and works on all private trackers, who often recommend it and only it.

Happily going to look at four of these five. I’m using uTorrent now, and it’s absolutely embarrassing to have that pop open on my computer and be greeted by some skeezy ad. The bitcoin mining was pretty shady too. Their response of “eh, get over it” didn’t win any points with me either.