From slow beginnings, BitComet has risen to become one of the most popular torrent client downloads on Softonic. For users accustomed to the often sparse interfaces of torrent apps, BitComet surprises with its flashy icons and multitude of options that give you more control over your downloads. For those that want a no-fuss client, the extra features may simply get in the way.

Once a torrent is selected for download with BitComet, a dialog pops up allowing you to determine the location to save to and select exactly which files in the torrent you want. Once downloading, the regular stop, pause, cancel, update etc options are all available plus a handy “remove torrent & all files” option which removes all trace of an unwanted torrent from your PC. Many users report the download rates are good although note no particular difference with other client speeds. The best feature however is a ‘preview media’ option, which forces the torrent to download sequentially instead of randomly thus allowing you to preview any multimedia downloads. It’s a great way to avoid broken links, but, on the downside, it will slow down your download considerably.

Another interesting feature is the ‘intelligent disk cache’ which really comes into its own on high speed connections. If you are lucky enough to get download transfer rates of 500 kb/s or higher, activating it allows BitComet to cache the data to access the disk less frequently. The result of this is that it doesn’t slow down your PC as receiving large amounts of data can sometimes do.

Forum reports from foreign users suggest that the program has not been translated properly from English, yet this doesn’t affect the capacities of BitComet. The other downside is that the uninstall procedure is not particularly clean. The application directory remains as does the registry entry although you can remove the former manually and the latter with any good registry cleaner.

There are simpler clients out there, such as uTorrent uTorrent and Azureus that offer the same download rates but with less fuss. If you have a particularly fast connection, can’t wait for your files to download before watching them and enjoy a torrent client with lots of whistles and bells, BitComet might be for you.

Download BitComet 1.05 in Softonic

uTorrent has quickly become a favorite among torrent users worldwide thanks to an innovative interface, minute CPU usage and extensive download details.

The program is undoubtedly one of the most reliable torrent clients on the market, thanks to an ultra quick installation process and a minimal use of PC resources. You can have a good number of torrents downloading and still be able to use your PC without suffering any lags.

The interface is simple to use and is divided into the list of torrents and extensive details like peer data, download and upload speeds, file pieces and blocks, or a graph of your current speeds. In an attempt to help you structure all your torrents, the application allows you to set labels to your individual downloads. You can also view the torrents according to whether they are downloading, completed, active or inactive. If you download a good deal of torrents at a time this is a good way of keeping track of the progress of them all. Furthermore, you can easily set up the web interface for uTorrent, which allows you to check your torrents from any PC connected to the internet. All you need is to have one PC taking care of the downloads and set up access to the interface of your uTorrent session.

uTorrent makes it easy for you to look for new downloads without opening up your browser. You can search the main torrent sites by typing the name of the file you are looking for in the box on the top right corner of the interface. uTorrent also includes an RSS downloader to receive feeds of your favourite torrent sites. This little feature is great to check out all new torrents in one click.

The first time you launch uTorrent it lets you check your connection settings online and verify whether your ports are functioning properly. The preferences menu is also replete with tweaking possibilities. You can customize queuing, scheduling and downloading. Setting the location of downloaded files is the only bit that could confuse users as uTorrent makes a difference between new downloads and completed downloads.

You might have guessed it, here at Softonic we have a soft spot for uTorrent. Not only does the mini torrent client use up very little memory, it also comes with loads of information and customization features to make your downloading experience as simple and automated as possible. If you’re tired of the bandwidth hogging Azureus or bored of the basic Bittorrent client, check out uTorrent.

Download uTorrent (µTorrent) 1.8.1 in Softonic

The torrent phenomenon is one of the most hyped about in the world of technology among Peer to Peer (P2P) users. It consists of sharing large files, like movies, software, or games anonymously and quickly with other peers. The file you want to download is cut up into small segments shared by users, creating what is called a swarm, and does not go through a central server, significantly reducing the bulk of file transfers, The Bittorrent client is actually the first P2P application to use this technology and became immensely popular when it was released. Torrents are considered by online users as a great way to download recently released movies or tv shows.

Thanks to a straightforward, uncluttered interface Bittorrent appears as a friendly torrent client that beginners will feel comfortable with. We particularly appreciated the integrated search box to look for files on the bittorrent website. Once you’ve found the torrent you want, download it to your PC, open it up inside Bittorrent and let the client do its job. The speed at which you download will depend on the number of seeds, that is people who have the complete file and are sharing it. The more seeds there are the quicker files will download.

You can set multiple torrent downloads and the downloading speed is fairly quick. It’s easy to configure the client and we suggest choosing the right port and setting upload and download rate limits to avoid hogging your bandwidth. It’s also good to set your downloads by priority to monitor more precisely how your torrents are doing.

Compared to the exhaustive Azureus, Bittorrent is very simplistic. It doesn’t provide half as many statistics and doesn’t let you customize the interface. Integrating a search box is a great idea, but it limits searches to the bittorrent website, not considered the most thorough source by torrent aficionados.

If you’re a newbie to the torrent world, Bittorrent is a good bet. It’s safe, stable and sharp. Associated with the huge database of legal torrents that is the bittorrent website, it makes for a very rich P2P experience. Advanced users will probably frown upon its lack of options but others should give it a try.

Download BitTorrent 6.1.1 in Softonic

With the release of Vuze, Azureus is jumping onto the legal torrent bandwagon. This application features the classic and extensive Azureus torrent client and adds to it an online platform from which you can download and submit legal audio and video content.

Vuze’s interface is a complete shake-up to what Azureus users are used to. The bittorrent developer has decided to focus on online multimedia content and introduce user participation. The first thing the user sees is a list of thumbnails of the latest videos uploaded to Vuze. You can browse these files by using the left side menu, divided in time, main channels and tags. The menu at the top also links to hot and new content. Vuze takes the web 2.0 road and you’ll see that most of the files have tags. You can write out a comment and leave a rating. The program also makes it a no brainer to send a video by email and link to content directly from your blog or website. There’s also a little diggit tag for each file, to submit them to the ultra famous social news site. It’s still a shame that Azureus omitted all the other famous social networking sites like del.icio.us or reddit. Maybe in a few months?

If you’re only interested in using Vuze as a torrent client, click the “Advanced tab” and you will be taken to the original Azureus interface. You can open up the gazillion configuration options that have come to define this as the most exhaustive bittorrent client on the planet. There’s even access to extra plug-ins like 3D view, RSS feed scanner or share exporter.

We won’t expand on the qualities of the Azureus client, for which you can read a review here. Vuze tries to innovate by adding social tools to the program and providing legal content. There’s up to nine channels to choose from, be it Tony Hawk’s Boom Boom Sabotage the Film School or Travel, yet we were disappointed with the content in general. On some channels there’s very little to watch and on others you don’t necessarily find what you were hoping for. The trailers channel for example, offers new video games trailers instead of releases of movies. However, with Azureus striking up a partnership with the BBC, you’ll soon get Dr Who, The League of Gentleman and Invasion Earth and surely other content providers will flock to Vuze. Taking this into account, Vuze also includes a special tag to let you know if a file is High Definition or not.

On the downside Vuze does nothing to atone the principal drawback to Azureus: the over extensive use of PC memory. Yes, Vuze is still a bandwidth hog, and there’s nothing to do about it. We also find the new interface to be incredibly cluttered. The old downloads and currently downloading windows are too similar to have to be separated and we don’t understand why Vuze includes a Library tab when you can access content straight from the Home tab.

While the whole interface felt a bit clunky, and the number of legal content is still limited, Vuze is a promising application for sharing and enjoying legal content. If you’re already hooked on the original Azureus bittorrent client, take a leap into the future with Vuze.

Download Azureus (Vuze) 3 1.1.0 in Softonic

Deluge is a popular Linux BitTorrent client that has now been ported to Windows while keeping its ease of use and excellent transfer speed, the two main features that have contributed to its success.

First of all, bear in mind that this app was originally written for another operating system, which means that the Windows version, according to the author's own words, is not as stable as the original one. In fact I got the odd error message while testing it, but other than that, the program worked fine. Transfer speed was excellent, along with the array of tools the program puts at your disposal to handle torrent files. Also, the program was totally unobtrusive for the user and very light on resources.

Deluge features a clear, uncluttered interface where you can easily manage all your file transfers and see information about each one of them. Also, the program's configuration settings enable you to tweak its behavior in great detail: you'll be able to limit bandwidth usage, configure a proxy server and also enable special plug-ins to add extra functionality to the program.

In all, Deluge is a powerful, easy-to-use BitTorrent client that's worth a try and will hopefully improve its stability under Windows in future releases.

Download Deluge 1.0.0 RC 3 in Softonic

If you regularly download torrents then you’ll know that it’s quite time consuming to keep going back to the torrent sites and scan through them to see if your favourite ones have been released yet.

One tool that can make your life easier is Torrent Episode Downloader (TED). The small program is a Java application that combines RSS channels and BitTorrent downloads. It allows you to subscribe to torrent RSS feeds and also configure key words as to which ones you want to download. In a nutshell, it does the hard work of tracking and downloading torrents for you without the need to even visit a site.

It works on a similar principle to the way iTunes subscribes to podcasts except that with Torrent Episode Downloader, obviously the file will be sent to your BitTorrent client rather than being played. This application is particularly useful if you’re following a series of torrents based on the same subject which are released on a weekly or monthly basis. Just make sure you’ve got enough space on your hard drive as it’s easy to forget that while you’re working, it’s busy downloading content.

If you're based in Europe and want to be first to see the latest TV episodes and releases, Torrent Episode Downloader can do the tracking hard work for you.

Download Torrent Episode Downloader 0.92 in Softonic

If you're not satisfied with your Torrent client and feel that you could squeeze some extra mileage out of your connection, then you should give BitTyrant a go.

BitTyrant uses a different type of torrent protocol that's compatible with BitTorrent and is optimized for fast download performance. Now, the big selling point of this client is speed although this cannot be guaranteed depending on what type of connection you have, how many seeds a torrent has etc.

However, the developers claim that it's up to three times quicker than Azureus and much fairer in the way it rewards uploaders rather than downloaders. In terms of interface however, there's little difference - BitTyrant looks exactly like Azureus although there are a few optional features to display statistics relevant to BitTyrant’s operation. There is however an underlying difference between it and other clients. BitTyrant differs in its selection of which peers to unchoke and send rates to unchoked peers. In this way, it theoretically means that bandwidth speeds are used more efficiently and fairly although as I say, much will depend on your own connection and ISP provider.

If you're happy with Azureus then there's no big reason to change to BitTyrant but if you've been experiencing declining download speeds or connection issues, you may be pleasantly surprised.

Download BitTyrant 1.1.1 in Softonic

Large files are always difficult to share online. Free file sharing sites are a pain, not everybody has an FTP server to share stuff and sharing them by email can take ages – if your email server can handle a 10MB email attachment at all.

Fortunately now there's another way to share big-sized files using email: Podmailing. Of course it doesn't work the usual way (message plus attached file) but more like as a P2P client or maybe I should say P2M client, which is the right way to name this file sharing protocol. The idea is not new (see Pando) but Podmailing has launched to add more choice to the P2M market.

The program is really easy to use. Simply click on the "New" button, select the files or folders you want to share, enter the email addresses and add a message. That's pretty much everything, although bear in mind that you must leave the program open (and your Internet connection on) in order to send the file.

The addressees of your podmail will receive a message in their inboxes with a link to download the file, which they'll be able to do very comfortably from their own web browser without the need for any third-party apps. Anyway, there's also the possibility to download the file via Podmailing or using the BitTorrent protocol (which also works with Podmailing, as this program is also a torrent client).

The main drawback I found is that you have to wait until the file is completely uploaded before starting to download it directly from the browser, so if your friend wants to share a 9GB file you'd better be patient. At least you can always start downloading it right away by using the Podmailing app or any BitTorrent client, which don't require the file to be finished uploading. Also, uploaded files are saved for 30 days on the Podmailing's servers.

Podmailing is a new client for the P2M protocol with which you can easily share large-sized files on the Internet. It may not be the fastest method but it's reliable and above all, very easy to use.

Download Podmailing 0.10.0 in Softonic

Although P2P networking still survives as a means of downloading video, audio and software, many people are now turning to torrents as a means of getting hold of their entertainment. While BitTorrent and BitComet rule the roost in terms of on-the-fly downloads, there are a few other pretenders to the crown that are worthy of a mention. BitSprit is definitely up with the best of them, allowing you to grab hold of torrents quickly without any fuss.

The application is significantly easier to use than many of its rivals, however, BitSpirit disappoints compared with its peers when it comes to tracking active downloads. If you would like to access information on your current download then you need to access the torrent itself, rather than relying on the application to provide you with this information.

That's not to say that BitSpirit is a total failure though, and the application boasts many assets to challenge the other contenders in the market. For instance, the app uses very little PC resources, leading to quick, smooth transfers that occur without any annoying program restarts. The program is very easy to pick up and use and save for a major bug when utilising the UPNP, BitSpirit is smooth and effective.

Originally a Chinese program, the app includes some horrible menu translations, making it often difficult to select the right menu option to access your download. That said, managing file download locations and tweaking options are both really simple operations. You are furnished with plenty of flexibility for accessing your downloads, giving you a host of options for choosing the source location and destination of the file.

If you're looking for a BitTorrent client that gives you access to files quickly through a simple interface, then BitSpirit is a worthy app. However, if you want a larger selection of files with a minimal chance of file corruption or hanging then you'd be better off sticking with the more reliable uTorrent or BitComet.

Download BitSpirit 3.3.2.352 in Softonic

BT Engine is a powerful assistant tool for BitTorrent download. BitTorrent is the most popular way for download. But we could not connect to all BitTorrent seeds under most conditions. Which decreased the download speed.

BT Engine has no download ability, but it is a professional tool set for BitTorrent download optimization. The computer optimized via BT Engine will improve its speed of connection while downloading. Meanwhile it will accelerate the speed to find more seeds and immediately connected to them.Generally, BT Engine can expedite speed to 100% more than usual. BT Engine is the only software that could provide disk protect function for BitTorrent download.

Download BT Engine 5.06 in Softonic

Software developers are always thinking of new apps to make our lives as computer users more comfortable, so that we don't need to worry about anything – not even changing the wallpaper.

With Wallpaper Juggler you no longer have to worry about changing your desktop background image. This program does it for you automatically, according to the lapse of time you set in its configuration menu: 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 4 hours or a whole day. The odd thing is that this menu didn't include the "Change on Windows startup" option which you can usually find in similar apps.

Wallpaper Juggler includes a few images that you can start using as wallpapers right away. Of course, you can also add your own images to this list and organize it in different albums, something I found especially useful in order to keep thematic wallpaper lists. There's also the option to download new wallpapers from the developer's website.

On the downside I missed some advanced tools like being able to choose wallpaper order or select the way you want specific wallpapers to be displayed: stretched, centered or tiled.

With Wallpaper Juggler you can have a fresh, new wallpaper any time you want and also update your wallpaper collection with images downloaded from the program's website.

Download Wallpaper Juggler 2.2 in Softonic

Halite is yet another open-source BitTorrent client and is based on the excellent libtorrent library from Rasterbar Software. What makes Halite stand out is its remote control interface allowing you to monitor and control the program from a mobile phone. It supports the following features:

• Multiple downloads.
• Displays more detailed information for the selected torrent.
• Connection limits both global and per-torrent.
• Transfer rate limits again global and per-torrent.
• Trackerless torrents (using the Mainline kademlia DHT protocol).
• IP filtering with eMule ipfilter.dat import.
• Minimize to tray with transfer rate summary.
• Association with ".torrent" files.
• Option to limit the number of instances to one.
• Estimated time remaining indicator.

Download Halite 0.3.0.2 RC in Softonic

Flash! Torrent is a torrent client based on burst! and BitTorrent Experimental that includes interesting functionalities and a clear, neat design.

It features a tabbed interface which make all the menu options easy to access: main window, transfers, an embedded web browser, statistics and of course the configuration options for the program.

Download Flash! Torrent 1.4c in Softonic

The open source FoxTorrent Firefox extension that lets you stream torrents as they download, from your web browser, with zero configuration needed.

Have a look at what this extension features:

• Streaming fast delivery: watch video and listen to audio as it downloads
• Complete Firefox integration: manage your torrent downloads from your browser window
• Windows, Mac and Ubuntu: consistent downloading experience across all three platforms
• Background downloading: continues to work even after your browser has been closed
• Low resource footprint: Foxtorrent uses less than 8 MB of RAM, and doesn't hog bandwidth
• Configuration-Free: automatic support for NATs, uPNP, and firewalls, with no tinkering necessary

Download FoxTorrent for Firefox 1.10 in Softonic

Azureus is a bittorrent client which lets file-hungry downloaders share large files in an organized and highly efficient way. The majority of users may be more familiar with the well known eMule, and although the system it uses results in a more user-friendly experience, the engine used by Azureus can offer some alternative and vastly superior performance enhancements.

The primary advantage of using a bittorrent client is the sheer speed at which files can be downloaded. Performance-wise, Azureus outstrips all the competition but of course, this comes at a price. The most widely discussed flaw of this software is the huge impact it has on your system's resources. The fact that it has been written in Java has been quoted as the source for its excess of memory usage, and in its attempt to optimize performance it squeezes every bit of bandwidth into getting files to download faster, making browsing the web a painfully slow experience.

There is a wide selection of bittorrent clients available to choose from, so what makes Azureus stand out from the crowd? First of all, it's an open source project, which not only means that it's free to download but that there is a large community of programmers, designers and users who are continually testing and improving upon the latest release. In fact, the Azureus project community is so healthy that it recently won the Sourceforge Community Choice Awards for the "Best Overall" category, as voted by the users.

To appeal to such a large user-base Azureus is packed with a great number of options, which can be used to customize precisely how the software runs. There are also comprehensive statistics about every file you download, with the all important "Estimated Time of Arrival" and the share ratio, which tells you how much of a particular file you have uploaded or "given back" to the community. Incidentally, in the perfect P2P community, every file should have a share ratio of two. (In other words, for each file you download, two users download it from you).

What makes a bittorrent client different to a P2P client such as eMule, is that you must download a reference file, or torrent, from the Net, and open it in the client, as opposed to searching directly for the file within the software. A downside to this is that the reference files may linger on after the file they refer to has been removed from your computer. With that in mind, torrent files often come with a health rating, judged by how many sources there are for that file. Very often, the file will be available to be downloaded very quickly when it is first released but within a few weeks or months, will become either very slow or unavailable.

Azureus is probably our favourite file sharing client but we prefer to use it alongside eMule as they both perform well under different circumstances. If you want to convert your PC in to a download factory then Azureus is what you need, but if you prefer an easy life and aren't put off by the long waits, then stick with eMule.

Download Azureus 2.5.0.4 in Softonic

BitLord is a p2p file-sharing freeware program fully compatible with Bittorrent, which is the most popular p2p protocol designed for high-speed distribution of 100MB or GB sized files. BitLord is a powerful, clean, fast, and easy-to-use bittorrent client. It supports simultaneous downloads, download queue, selected downloads in torrent package, fast-resume, chatting, disk cache, speed limits, port mapping, proxy, ip-filter, etc.

Download BitLord 2.0 Beta in Softonic

GreedyTorrent can help you survive on trackers that enforce a minimum 1:1 trading ratio, and can keep you from getting banned for not uploading. So how does it work? In simple words, it modifies the conversation between your bittorrent client and the tracker, suppressing the actual upload amount. Instead, GreedyTorrent puts you in control of your own upload ratio -- you can define how much upload you want to submit to the tracker.

GreedyTorrent has the following features:

• GreedyTorrent is set-once-and-forget type software. No need of configuring it each time you queue a torrent file to download.
• No complicated options to configure. The default installation of GreedyTorrent is configured to provide you five times actual upload, enough for the survival of a normal ADSL user. There is no need to manually find the hash values or to set tracker URLs, it takes care of them automatically. GreedyTorrent was developed with the beginner user in mind, with an easy to use interface.
• GreedyTorrent generates no additional traffic. It does not run or emulate an "extra torrent client", and thus does not waste your precious bandwidth.
• You can continue to use your favorite BitTorrent client, no need to switch to another BitTorrent client to use GreedyTorrent.

Download GreedyTorrent 1.0.1 Beta 170 in Softonic

Torrent Swapper is an open sourced sociable peer to peer file-sharing client based on the Bittorrent protocol that is ideal for high-speed distribution of large files that has a basic understanding of human friendships, of user tastes in content, and of Internet connectivity between users.

Torrent Swapper supports simultaneous downloads, download queue, selected downloads in torrent package, fast-resume, disk cache, speed limits, port mapping, proxy, ip-filter, etc.

Get connected with other likeminded users now!

Download Torrent Swapper 1.0.0 in Softonic

Torrent Harvester is a search program for any type of file contained on a web page. It is currently named Torrent Harvester due to the fact that most of the Engines are Torrent Engines, however Torrent Harvester is not limited to searching for Torrents and can search for any type of file given the proper Engine file.

Torrent Harvester was developed with flexibility in mind. There is nothing hard-coded for a particular web-page, all Engine information is stored in user-modifiable XML files or through the included Engine Designer. This makes it possible for users to add Engines for their own favourite Torrent sites, or indeed any sites which list information.

Take a look at what Torrent Harvester has to offer:

• Easily searches a multitude of sites with a single click
• Returns all results in a single list
• Download directly from the list, or visit the website source page for complete details
• Complete filtering and sorting of results, on any column
• Allows searching and downloading on sites which require user registration
• Complete downloading transparency
• Get updates of engines directly from within Torrent Harvester
• Create your own engines for your favourite sites using the in-built Engine Designer
• Completely user-definable engines
• Complete help every step of the way
• 88 Included engines, with more coming all the time via updates

Download Torrent Harvester 0.7 b in Softonic

BitTorrent client is the successor of Shad0w's Experimental Client, and is programmed by the same person. Based on the original BitTorrent client, the interface is largely the same, with added features such as upload/download speed limitation, prioritised downloading when downloading batches, detailed information about connections to other peers and UPnP Port Forwarding (Universal Plug and Play).

Super seeding mode and web seeding are also features of this client which allow faster downloads and were originally developed by the BitTornado group.

Download BitTornado 0.3.18 Experimental in Softonic