Download Free Bittorrent Client
Selene Bulger
The best free torrent clients on PC and Mac will make downloading so much easier and stress-free. Grabbing files directly from a server can be frustrating as you often deal with long wait times and slow speeds. Not only because you're just dealing with a single source, but also because you might be competing with other users for bandwidth.
On the other hand, a torrent client makes faster download speeds and shorter download times possible. That's due to the fact that the client will grab parts of that file from multiple sources and simultaneously download those different bits, then put the file together like a jigsaw to use.
Luckily, there are excellent free torrent clients out there, offering their downloading services without charging you a single penny. And, since we've used, tested, and reviewed many of them, we thought we'd share the best ones in this guide for your convenience. There are options below that are streamlined for those who just want to get started without fuss as well as ones with more advanced features.
qBittorrent is the perfect compromise. Some torrent clients offer every function imaginable while others keep things as simple as possible. This free torrent client, on the other hand, sits right in the middle, aiming to "meet the needs of most users while using as little CPU and memory as possible."
It boasts an integrated torrent search engine, media player, encryption, prioritization of torrents and the files within those torrents, IP filtering and torrent creation, and it's the closest open-source, junk-free equivalent to uTorrent. It also offers a minimalist and ad-free user interface, which we found to be easy to use and download content off the internet. During our testing, it's proven to be secure as well, which isn't surprising because it is open-source software. If you're looking for a cross-platform torrent client that covers the essentials without getting overly complicated, qBittorrent is great.
Vuze (formerly Azureus) claims to be the most powerful BitTorrent client on Earth. We're not sure how it ranks on other planets, but it's certainly a serious contender for that title. There are two flavors: the stripped-back Vuze Leap, and the fully-fledged Vuze Plus. Both offer torrent download, media playback and support for magnet file links, but Vuze Plus adds integrated virus protection and the ability to preview media files.
One of Vuze's key selling points is its interface, which we found during testing to slice through the jargon and make even the more advanced features accessible to new users. In fact, setting up Vuze is extremely easy, even for first-timers. Vuze also offers bandwidth limiting, IP filtering, and all the other features you'd expect from a robust torrent client. Definitely one of the first options to consider.
Deluge has been around forever, and it can be as simple or as powerful as you want it to be, making it one of the most versatile free torrent clients out there. That's because it's extendable via plug-ins. During testing, we found that to be its greatest strength, being customizable with the help of different plugins. That effectively enables you to build your own personalized version of Deluge.
uTorrent, also known as µTorrent, has been around since 2005 and it's the most widely used free torrent client outside China. It's attracted some criticism over the years, however: it's ad-supported and many users argue that the most recent versions are a little too heavy on the advertising and bundled software front. Make sure you read each step of the installer carefully and uncheck any software you don't want to install.
It's worth noting that uTorrent has a record of security problems, the most recent of which had the potential to let hackers control key functions of the client and spy on users' downloads. BitTorrent has since released a patch for the vulnerability.
Are you still following us? However, while the apps are functionally identical there are a few key differences: BitTorrent offers web-based seeding, commenting and reviewing, and you may find that the BitTorrent client is welcomed by private trackers that don't like uTorrent.
If you're considering testing a cli client, have a look at btg also. It's my choice over rtorrent, since it also supports blocklist and runs as a pure daemon (rtorrent needs to be run in a screen, I think).
If you are running windows why not just use the native windows apps of Sonarr and Qbittorrent?
With that being said did you input the right username and password in Sonarr when you set up Qbittorrent? You could also try a different docker image.
And how are your folders mapped? Trash Guides has a good tutorial on how to configure and map folders
I found that uT and bT clients for about 2-3 years starts to download tasks differently comparing with previous their behavior. About 30% of all started to download from 0.0% tasks stops forever when client finished to download 1 piece of each file in task. Seed and Peers are connected (for example Seeds 30(100), Peers 12(150) ) but download and upload columns on that task is less then 1 kB/s or 0 at all. To make task downloaded I stop task wait a few seconds and start it again. That make task download at full speed after about 6-8 seconds after it restart. Sometimes I need to stop hanging tasks twice.
how is can be cause network card drives? all other task downloads and uploads runs with good speed just simultaneously with hanged up task which stops forever after 1-2 pieces downloaded. I saw periods about 8-12 hours with many seeders and restart of that task got it speed of light after 10 seconds. All other network client software goes well (web browser, skype, team viewer, WinUpd, etc.)
something to do with network hardware or software (network card drivers, antivirus or firewall) rather than the various clients you've tried.
it's for 2-3 years on destop PCs (bought in 2013 and 2014) and on Intel NUC5i3 (bought in 2015). All comes with no AV installed (WinDef turned off also) same default Win native Firewall rules, different network cards and drivers for them. But just like copy-paste behaviour - completely the same.
All PC ran Win8, now win10 the problem is the same for all starting about 2-3 years ago.
As you see it looks like the problem is in bT and uT clients itself. May be I wrong, but for me all points to this for now. Really need debug info or debug build to see verbose information of that bT/uT modules/components/functions doing. Can you help me in this way or please re-address that topic to your coolest developers.
Before I download torrents you link me (I guess your torrents source will be with the same behavior of my client):
did I figure out my problem completely and you can understand me or your still need a video how task hanging goes like? Please be free to told me if my problem description or my English is not what you expect it to be. Please feel free to tell me everything and we will go straight forward much faster - just let me know if you know a shortcut.
So the problem is in torrents? What the problem is? I can write an app to recover/re-parse/convert torrent files but I have no idea what is the torrent problem - BitTorrent client just need to stop and to start download to everything work fine. Is it really *.torrent files problem? I do not know how you diagnose it.
The simple answer to your question in bold is, you don't. If you do not know ANY information at all about even one host which might contain DHT metadata, you are stuck -- you can't even get started. I mean, sure, you could brute force attempt to discover an IP on the public internet with an open port that happens to broadcast DHT information. But more likely, your BT client is hard-coded to some specific static IP or DNS which resolves to a stable DHT node, which just provides the DHT metadata.
Of course, to get around this, someone could deploy a patched BitTorrent client with a new list of pre-determined stable DHT nodes or DNS addresses, and loudly advertise to the P2P community to use this new list instead. But this would become a "whack-a-mole" situation where the aggressor (the node-eater) would progressively download these lists themselves, and target the brave new bootstrapping nodes, then take them offline, too.
When a BitTorrent client generates a trackerless .torrent file (that is, when someone is getting ready to share something new via BitTorrent), it adds a "nodes" key (key as in "key/value pair"; like a section header, not a crypto key) to the .torrent file that contains the K closest DHT nodes known to that client.
A trackerless torrent dictionary does not have an "announce" key. Instead, a trackerless torrent has a "nodes" key. This key should be set to the K closest nodes in the torrent generating client's routing table. Alternatively, the key could be set to a known good node such as one operated by the person generating the torrent. Please do not automatically add "router.bittorrent.com" to torrent files or automatically add this node to clients routing tables.
So when you feed your BitTorrent client the .torrent file of a trackerless torrent that you want to download, it uses the value of that "nodes" key from the .torrent file to find its first few DHT nodes.
Distributed in DHT means clients don't have to hold all the list containning the md5 sum of the shared files name, with corresponding peers. The list of hash is shapes into equals parts and distributed with redundancy througout the swarm. If a peer disconnect there is somewhere another one with the same part of the hashlist. The peers share each others the adress to the good holder of the hashlist part.
The first one does the file-sharing: A swarm in bittorrent lingo is a group of peers sharing a bittorrent object (e.g. a file or directory structure). Each bittorent object has some metadata that is saved in a .torrent-file. (It includes object size, name of folder, possibly tracker information or nodes. ect.)The hash of the metadata required to download this bittorrent object is called the infohash.
df19127ead