Usage share of BitTorrent clients

The usage share of BitTorrent clients is the percentage of users that use a particular BitTorrent client, regardless of version.

2020

A study conducted in March 2020 by TorrentFreak ^[1]

Rank	Application	Market Share
1	μTorrent	68.6%
2	BitTorrent	6.6%
3	Libtorrent (μTorrent's web interface reports this as its client ID)	6.3%
4	Transmission	5.1%
5	MediaGet	3.7%
6	qBittorrent	3.4%
7	Zona	3.3%
8	Deluge	0.9%
9	BitComet	0.6%
10	BiglyBT (operated by former developers of Vuze)	0.3%
11	Free Download Manager	0.2%
12	BitSpirit	0.2%
13	BitLord	0.1%
14	Tribler	<0.1%
14	FrostWire	<0.1%
14	Tixati	<0.1%
14	tTorrent	<0.1%
14	aTorrent	<0.1%
14	PicoTorrent	<0.1%

2015

Lifehacker, a software weblog, took a survey of 13,823 readers' preferred BitTorrent clients in May 2015. It showed that μTorrent still maintains a sizable lead over competitors, despite concerns over adware and bloatware. Runner-up Transmission was praised for being lightweight, while qBittorrent was praised for being cross-platform and open-source, Deluge for its plugin library, and Tixati for its simplicity. ^[2] Vuze, another notable client, failed to make an appearance in the top five for the first time.

Poll data from: Lifehacker ^[2]

Rank	Application	Percentage of users' preferred clients	Number of votes
1	μTorrent	42.47%	5,870
2	Transmission	21.23%	2,935
3	qBittorrent	18.75%	2,592
4	Deluge	10.7%	1,479
5	Tixati	6.85%	947

2009

Delft University of Technology

A study by the Tribler P2P research team at the Delft University of Technology. To generate this data, samples were taken from a number of swarms of users which were then used to identify which BitTorrent client each user was using, this data was used by TorrentFreak in the table below:

Samples of Global BitTorrent Client Usage Share (Percent & Peers)

Source	Date & Age	μTorrent	Vuze	BitTorrent (mainline)	BitComet	Transmission	FlashGet	Unknown	Tuotu	libtorrent	Xunlei	Other	Sample Size
[3]	16 September 2011; 13 years ago (2011-09-16)	47.97% 267,466	22.49% 125,417	13.01% 72,536	1.01% 5,638	7% 39,011	?	6.22% 34,703	?	1.02% 5,703	?	1.27% 7,062	100% 557,536
[4] [5]	4 December 2009; 15 years ago (2009-12-04)	25.77% 92,086,035	24.08% 86,055,354	4.82% 17,207,544	4.31% 15,403,400	3.26% 11,637,110	1.09% 3,882,628	1% 3,590,584	0.71% 2,531,472	0.63% 2,251,736	29.31% 104,717,386	3.02% 10,806,362	100% 357,301,730
[6]	18 October 2009; 15 years ago (2009-10-18)	60.16% 10,361	14.22% 2,449	8.65% 1,489	4.43% 763	3.65% 628	?	7.97% 1,373	?	0.31% 53	0.02% 3	0.59% 102	100% 17,221
[7]	14 August 2009; 16 years ago (2009-08-14)	56.81%	18.13%	11.79%	4.71%	2.95%	?	4.21%	?	?	?	1.40%	100% 165,000+
[8]	24 June 2009; 16 years ago (2009-06-24)	55.84%	16.85%	12.01%	6.50%	1.60%	?	4.02%	?	?	?	3.17%	100% 150,000+

2007

Digital Music News

Digital Music News collected the data from PC Pitstop, a company that gathers data from computers using their free online virus and malware scanners. The program scans Windows Registry to find which clients have been installed, more than a million Microsoft Windows computers were surveyed.

Global install rate ^[9]

Rank	Application	Install % on Windows desktops
1	LimeWire	18%
2	μTorrent	5.56%
3	BitTorrent (mainline)	2.28%
4	Vuze	2.11%
5	BitComet	1.89%
6	Bitlord	1.27%

References

1. "uTorrent is the Most Used BitTorrent Client By Far". April 5, 2020.
2. Henry, Alan (19 May 2015). "Most Popular BitTorrent Client: μTorrent". Lifehacker. Retrieved 3 May 2017.
3. TorrentFreak
4. TorrentFreak
5. EZTV
6. "Tribler". Archived from the original on 2009-10-22. Retrieved 2009-10-18.
7. TorrentFreak
8. TorrentFreak
9. Van der Sar, Ernesto (2007-12-16), "uTorrent Gains Popularity, Azureus Loses Ground", TorrentFreak , retrieved 2024-08-02