10 Best Free Torrent Clients for Windows PC in 2023
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qBittorrent vs uTorrent in 2023: The Best & the Most Popular Torrent Clients Compared
In the qBittorrent vs uTorrent battle, one is a behemoth supported by ads and a freemium model, while the other is open source and maintained by a small team of volunteers. Which provides the better experience for the end user? Let’s find out.
If you’re looking for a torrent client, it’s likely you are considering uTorrent or qBittorrent. However, which is the better choice for you: qBittorrent vs uTorrent? Read this comparison guide to find out how they are similar, how they differ, and which one is better for your use case.
Key Takeaways: Torrent Client Comparison
- qBittorrent is better than uTorrent in almost every way, making it the obvious winner in any direct comparison.
- qBittorrent is completely free and open source, and it offers torrent streaming — something that uTorrent puts behind a paywall.
- uTorrent is only better if you absolutely need a client that can run on both desktop and Android. In any other scenario, go with qBittorrent or any of the other best uTorrent alternatives.
Although incredibly innovative in its day, uTorrent has long since fallen from grace in the eyes of most hardcore BitTorrent users. A combination of ownership changes and the introduction of ads and a paid plan tier left a bad taste in the mouths of many. That said, uTorrent is available on more platforms than any other BitTorrent client, which can have its uses.
qBittorrent, on the other hand, is completely open source, free and maintained by passionate volunteers. This is a huge advantage that allows it to implement features that uTorrent either puts behind its paywall or ignores completely. However, its desktop-only application means mobile-only users will have to look elsewhere. Keep reading for a comparison of both torrent clients.
- Is qBittorrent Still the Best?
If you don’t need a mobile client, qBittorrent is the best torrent client out there. It’s completely free and open source, and it comes with great features like network interface binding and sequential downloads.
qBittorrent was faster than uTorrent in all of our tests.
qBittorrent is better than uTorrent in almost every scenario. The only exception is if you’re looking for a torrent client specifically for Android.
How We Rated qBittorrent vs uTorrent
For the purposes of this comparison, we’ll focus on what makes the two services different. Since most BitTorrent clients broadly follow the same design language, we’ll only take a quick look at the similarities before moving on to what makes them different. If you want a full breakdown of either client, make sure to check out our uTorrent review and qBittorrent review for more details.
uTorrent vs qBittorrent: Similarities & Differences
Before we dive into the most important similarities and differences between qBittorrent and uTorrent in more detail, here’s a quick look at what each client offers.
| qBittorrent | uTorrent | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free* |
| Torrent streaming | Paid plans only | |
| Plugins | ||
| Android app | ||
| Media player | Paid plans only | |
| Bind to VPN | ||
| BitTorrent protocol v2 | ||
| RSS feed support | ||
| Directory management | ||
| Labels or categories | ||
| Remote torrent management |
*With ads; 3 paid plans
Similarities
As we’ve mentioned, most BitTorrent clients are pretty similar, at least on the surface, so we won’t spend too much time going over every detail they have in common. That said, here are some highlights.
Basic Torrenting Experience
The basic torrenting experience is largely the same on qBittorrent and uTorrent. Adding, managing and deleting your torrents or magnet links is pretty much identical regardless of which client you use. Both have the ability to automate downloads through RSS and do some basic directory management.
Both qBittorrent and uTorrent include various options for capping or throttling your torrent traffic, either through seeding ratios, time limits, hard caps or the uTP protocol. You can create your own torrents and start seeding them with either client, and both offer similar queuing and BitTorrent connection settings.
User Interface
As we mentioned already, most BitTorrent clients look very similar. In fact, uTorrent was the client that popularized the standard design that most torrenting software shares today. Because of this, everything about the user interface is very similar, right down to the placement of tabs and individual buttons.
Differences
Now that we understand how uTorrent and qBittorrent are similar, let’s get to what actually matters: namely, how they’re different from each other.
Free & Open-Source vs Freemium
The first and most obvious difference between the two is that qBittorrent is free and open source, while uTorrent offers a free version with ads and a premium version for a subscription fee. Although you can technically disable the ads, doing so is cumbersome and likely to get reset when the next update drops.
The uTorrent Pro plan locks four features behind a paywall: torrent streaming, media player, antivirus and file conversion. qBittorrent provides two of these (torrent streaming and a media player via integration) completely free of charge. Not only that, qBittorrent’s implementation of these features actually works for x265 encoded video, whereas uTorrent’s doesn’t.
The two features that the Pro version of uTorrent has that qBittorrent doesn’t are the antivirus functionality and the file conversion. The former is useful, but doesn’t measure up to any of the best antivirus software. Meanwhile, the file conversion feature suffers from the same problem that the media player and streaming does, in that it doesn’t support x265 video.
Another huge consequence of being open source is that users can freely develop plugins for qBittorrent, something that isn’t possible for uTorrent. This means that you can add torrent search engines directly to qBittorrent, whereas the most uTorrent can do is open a browser window for you.
Mobile Client
Arguably, the only edge that uTorrent has in this comparison is that it offers a fully fledged mobile client that lets you download torrents directly to your phone or tablet. That said, it’s only for Android, so this is of no use to iOS users.
Still, qBittorrent has no official mobile client at all, and the few third-party ones that exist are unreliable at best and downright unusable at worst, depending on your device and Android version.
uTorrent vs qBittorrent Speed Test
In terms of speed when downloading torrents, qBittorrent again has the edge. Although torrent download speed varies greatly depending on available peers, there’s still some difference between clients. To figure out which is faster, we ran some speed tests by downloading three movies from the same torrent file with both clients.
These torrents came from the internet archive and have only a few peers, but the ones they have are consistent, which should ensure useful results. We used a 15 Mbit/s internet connection to perform our tests, and were connected to a VPN (in this case, NordVPN) for all the downloads.
Furthermore, qBittorrent has implemented version two of the BitTorrent protocol, which fixes security vulnerabilities by improving the cryptographic hash function. uTorrent also has error reporting enabled by default. While this is pretty common across most types of software, it’s not great for something as privacy-focused as the torrenting space.
uTorrent’s Shady Business Practices
Another world of difference between qBittorrent and uTorrent is with regard to business practices. Besides implementing ads and launching a paid premium version, uTorrent has faced plenty of other scandals over the years.
The most significant was when it was discovered that the company secretly bundled a bitcoin miner with the software, though this was fortunately discontinued after a few months due to intense backlash.
In a similar vein, Rainberry Inc. (uTorrent’s developer) was purchased by the TRON Foundation back in 2018, which is a blockchain and cryptocurrency-focused foundation. It didn’t take long for the company to launch BTT (short for BitTorrent Token), a cryptocurrency that users can earn by seeding and spend on increased bandwidth.
Of course, this flies in the face of BitTorrent’s purpose to begin with — namely, being a free and equal place to share information. We also noticed that it costs significantly more BTT to “boost your bandwidth” than you earn by seeding torrents.
Which Is Better: qBittorrent vs uTorrent?
If you’ve made it this far, you already know that the winner in this comparison is clearly qBittorrent, thanks to being completely free and open source. uTorrent’s only saving grace is its mobile app.
Not only that, but qBittorrent also manages to offer huge quality-of-life features like torrent streaming and better security options. Meanwhile, uTorrent charges money for its version of these features, which is made worse by the fact that it can’t stream x265 encoded video.
The only thing uTorrent has going for it is that it’s available on both desktop and Android, whereas qBittorrent is limited to Windows, Mac or Linux.
We Recommend qBittorrent if You Want To…
- Stream torrents: Sequential downloading lets you stream torrents while they’re still being downloaded.
- Use it for free without ads: qBittorrent is completely free and open source and there are zero ads.
- Torrent more securely: qBittorrent lets you bind it to a network interface (for example, a VPN) and also features improved protocol security.
- Use third-party plugins: Since it’s open source, anyone can develop plugins for qBittorrent.
We Recommend uTorrent If You Want To…
- Torrent on Android: uTorrent is one of the few BitTorrent clients that have official apps for both desktop and mobile.
The Verdict: Why We Think qBittorrent Wins Overall
That brings us to the end of this uTorrent vs qBittorrent comparison. Unlike uTorrent, qBittorrent is completely free and open source, has a better feature set with fewer problems and performs better in terms of download speeds. Unless you’re a dedicated Android torrenter, there’s really no reason not to go with qBittorrent.
That said, both clients feature a streamlined interface with a simplified GUI and both include basic features like bandwidth scheduling, IP filtering, port forwarding and a remote web interface.
Unfortunately for uTorrent, the ability to stream video and audio files for free with qBittorrent, as well as the latter’s additional security measures, means that it simply can’t compete on the same level.
What did you think of our comparison? What do you think is the most important difference when comparing qBittorrent and uTorrent? Do you agree that qBittorrent is clearly the better option, or are you sticking with uTorrent? Let us know in the comments below. Thank you for reading.
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10 Best Free Torrent Clients for Windows PC in 2023
You can’t just download a torrent file using your casual downloader. It won’t work. You will need a separate torrent downloader or torrent client for that.
Torrent clients play a very crucial role when it comes to downloading large files, such as movies, software, games, etc from torrent sites.
So in this article, we are providing you with the list of Best Torrent Clients or Torrent Downloaders for Windows PCs and laptops that provide good downloading speed and come with fewer adware bundles.
But, before moving further we would like to acknowledge you of the two broad choices regarding torrent downloading tools.
- Cloud Software (Online torrent service)
- Client Software (Offline or in simple words computer installed service)
Both cloud and client services have their own set of advantages.
Where cloud is better at cloaking your P2P habits, on the other hand, the client offers free of cost service.
So it’s entirely up to you, what you choose.
Table Of Contents
- Top 10 Torrent Clients
- 1. BitTorrent – Oldest of all torrents
- 2. uTorrent – a very tiny BitTorrent alternative
- 3. Web Torrent – Best for Casual Users
- 4. BitComet – Best of both worlds
- 5. qBitTorrent – an Open source torrent downloader
- 6. Tribler – a torrent with anonymity cover
- 7. Vuze – uTorrent alternative
- 8. Deluge – UI less torrent downloader
- 9. Bitport.io
- 10. Boxopus
Top 10 Torrent Clients
1. BitTorrent – Oldest of all torrents
The first and the most preferred torrent client on our list is BitTorrent.
Despite being too old it still holds a very great place and a strong user base.
As the new versions came up, it now has more advanced useful features in it. For instance, it now organizes different downloaded torrent files based on their categories. And also provides more technical details on them as compared with other torrents.
Not only that it also offers download scheduler, limit bandwidth usage, paired devices and many other features in BitTorrent’s Preferences windows. So, you can explore it by yourself.
The best part is it’s absolutely free and has all the required features in it. But if you are allergic to advertisements and want more handy features on it, then you can opt for BitTorrent Pro which also supports customer support service now. And of course for the PRO version, you have to pay, so keep that in mind.
2. uTorrent – a very tiny BitTorrent alternative
If you ever used BitTorrent then using a uTorrent will be a piece of cake for you.
It’s a very popular torrent downloader as people are using it since 2005.
The reason it is called as the BitTorrent alternative is that it was developed by BitTorrent Inc itself. So it has the same UI and almost the same features in it. In short, they look very similar except the logo and theme color. And only these two things can tell the difference between both.
3. Web Torrent – Best for Casual Users
Web Torrent is the easiest torrent downloader a user can have.
If you are not into extra features or something then web Torrent is for you.
Its simplicity can be defined by the fact that if you want to download a torrent file. The only thing you need to do is paste the torrent file URL in its main windows and you are done. It’s as simple as that. After 1 or 2 seconds, it will automatically start downloading that file.
This torrent downloader came into existence in the year 2017. And still manages to give a tough competition to other well-established torrent downloaders such as BitTorrent and Utorrent.
Another reason why people prefer web Torrent is that it runs directly inside the web browser, without the worry of downloading it separately. That gives it a complete edge over the others and makes it as the most loved torrent downloader over the internet.
4. BitComet – Best of both worlds
BitComet is not only a torrent client. It is also used to download other files as well.
In fact, it is considered among the best download managers for windows mainly because of its best of both world’s capability.
BitComet has all the features of normal and torrent downloader. And also has some additional features in it such as long-term seeding. This feature allows BitComet to fetch data from other peers who have 100% of that torrent file. This facility mainly helps when all the seeders go offline, and the torrent gets stuck.
It also has the intelligent disk caching feature.
This feature puts the frequently accessed data in the cache of main memory, allowing less use of a hard drive which somehow effects on the system’s performance.
5. qBitTorrent – an Open source torrent downloader
qBitTorrent is a free open source torrent downloader which has all the juice to serve.
In simple words, it has all the main features that a torrent downloader should have.
The best part about this torrent downloader is that it is absolutely free from any promotional ads or advertisements. This means you need not to worry about those irritating ads.
Another feature we like about this torrent is that despite having so many options regarding customization and all. It still manages to keep things simple, clear and in a sorted way. So the chances of getting confused while using it is almost zero percent.
It also has its own search bar which lets the users find downloaded or downloading torrent files. One more interesting feature you might like about this is its UI lock.
You can activate this UI lock by clicking the yellow padlock in the top-right corner or you can set the UI password for qBitTorrent.
6. Tribler – a torrent with anonymity cover
Working on the principles of Tor like onion network, Tribler is the torrent downloader you would like to get your hands on.
This unique feature adds to the point when it comes to downloading the best torrent downloader a user can have.
In order to make user anonymous, Tribler cuts their direct link from BitTorrent swarm by placing three daisy-chained proxy servers in between. However, this feature only works for peers or torrent downloaders.
Proxy support for seeders is currently considered as an experimental feature. You can also change the anonymity settings by visiting Settings > Anonymity. Rest you can experience it by downloading it from the link above the picture.
7. Vuze – uTorrent alternative
Vuze is an amazing torrent downloader when it comes to functionality and usage.
It isn’t much younger than BitTorrent or Utorrent. But has all the necessary features in it. It comes with built-in web and metasearch tools, in order to keep users within the boundaries of the torrent.
The best part about Vuze is that it has its own high-quality torrent files supported from official sources. Vuze also allows users to chat with other Vuze users and share torrents. It can also convert and transfer files directly to different devices which is something unique about this torrent downloader. Moreover, the torrent also supports iTunes integration.
At last, you may not find it as much eye-appealing as Tribler but it owns much potential than others. It’s a well-built torrent downloader which is fully featured packed. So just give it a try.
8. Deluge – UI less torrent downloader
This offbeat torrent downloader might look a bit odd to some people. But never mistake to judge its capabilities by looks.
It’s a simple, lightweight torrent downloader that does its job pretty well when it comes in downloading torrent files. Deluge also has its own cross-platform presence by offering support for Linux and macOS.
It also offers features like encryption, local peer discovery (LSD), setting global and per-torrent bandwidth limits, etc. It also has the support for various first and third-party plugins for a more personalized user experience.
9. Bitport.io
Bitport.io is an excellent torrent downloader that works on the cloud or as a cloud service.
This simply means you need not to download any software or perform any kind of installation. Instead, you only have to log into your online account and they will download torrents for you onto their own private servers. Which is pretty nice.
Once your file downloaded on their server then you can simply transfer it on your computer by signing in again.
The free version allows enough of 1 GB of storage. But you can subscribe it, to get more storage and unlimited transfer speeds.
10. Boxopus
Similar to bitport.io, Boxopus is a cloud-based torrent downloader service you will enjoy.
Boxopus has the capability of storing your torrent files in your own Google Drive or Box accounts which is absolutely amazing.
The sad part is its not a free service. They will charge you around $1.50 per week, $14.50 per month, and $50 per year which is according to us is very reasonable if you somehow manage to plan your downloads first. Rest you can opt for any of the options above.
ALSO READ
- The Pirate Bay Alternatives
- What are seeds, peers, and leechers in Torrents’ language?
- Kickass Torrents Alternatives
- Demonoid Alternatives
- 10 Best Torrent Sites To Download E-Books For Free
- 10 Best Music Torrent Sites
CONCLUSION
So this was all regarding 10 Best Torrent Clients or Torrent Downloader for Windows. If you have any better suggestions then let us know in the comment section below.
