BT clients

A BitTorrent Client is computer software that utilizes the BitTorrent P2P protocol to download and upload data. The original BitTorrent client was released in 2002 by Bram Cohen. Since then, many different clients have developed, all of which are at least partially based on the original BitTorrent client.

BitTorrent Clients

Please be sure to avoid all clients listed as Forbidden unless you want your account disabled. Also, keep in mind that Not Recommended clients are not suggested to use with BakaBT because of various reasons.

Recommended

µTorrent / uTorrent (Windows, WINE)

• One of the most preferred clients on BakaBT. This client is known for having a small distribution size, despite being feature rich, and using little system resources. Available for Windows and WINE emulation only.

Vuze (Azureus) (Windows, Linux, Mac)

• One of the most preferred clients on BakaBT. This client has recently changed name to Vuze from it's old name Azureus.
• What Vuze is unique for is it's community part, which allows you to share torrents easily with your friends.
• While this client is very rich in features, it is written in Java, which makes it slow by nature, and is quite a memory hog. Despite these enormous flaws, it is still one of the best.

rTorrent (Linux, cygwin?)

• A mature BitTorrent client built around the libTorrent C++ library. Ncurses-based.
• Uses very minimal resources.
• Often used in a detached GNU Screen session.
• Has many web front-ends available.

Acceptable

Aria2 (Linux, BSD, Mac)

• Adaptive download client with a full-featured BT mode. Interesting hybrid mode where data can be downloaded via FTP or HTTP and added to an active torrent. Small footprint application in active development.

BitTornado (Windows, Linux, Mac)

• Client developed by John Hoffman. This client was the first to include super seeding. This client automatically bans connections with BitComet clients.

BitTorrent 5 (Mainline) (Windows, Linux, Mac)

• The official BitTorrent client, nicknamed Mainline by developers. The last version before BitTorrent Inc. switched to the uTorrent build.
• The newest version for Mac is 4.27.2 and Linux 5.2.0.

BitTorrent 6 (Windows)

• The official BitTorrent client. It is based on the uTorrent client. Only big difference from uTorrent is that it comes with support for BitTorrent DNA™.

BitSpirit (Windows)

Deluge (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X)

• Deluge is a lightweight, Free Software, cross-platform BitTorrent client.

KTorrent (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X)

QTorrent (Windows, Linux, Mac)

• QTorrent bundles it's own version of BitTornado but depend on PyQt (which you much install separately).

Transmission (Linux, Mac OS X, BeOS)

• A client that runs on Unix based systems, Mac OS X, and BeOS. Default client for Ubuntu Linux, Zenwalk Linux and some other distributions. This client is known for having a small distribution size.

Not Recommended

BitComet (Windows)

• This client is not suggested for use in the BakaBT community. It is currently only available for the Windows platform.

BitLord (Windows)

• This client is based on the source code of the BitComet 0.56 core and includes adware and malware. It is not suggested for use in the BakaBT community. It is currently only available for the Windows platform.

Shareaza (Windows)

• There exists two Shareza, one false and the true client. Shareza V4 is the false one, and it comes bundled with adware. Shareza V2 is the true client.

Forbidden

Xunlei (Windows)

• Client that doesn't follow the Bittorrent protocol properly, reports fake transfer stats to give you a constant 1.0 ratio. Certain to get your account disabled once we find out.

External Websites

• BitTorrent clients on Wikipedia