The torrent player
Stream at the speed of the swarm.
TorrentPlayer plays any torrent, video or audio, straight from the people sharing it. Press play and it starts in seconds. Skip ahead and it fetches that exact moment first, so you are watching again in about a second.
0.5 s
From play to playing
0.7 s
Median skip, public swarm
0
Servers in between
0
Accounts, ads, telemetry
Search, play, skip
Recorded in real time · nothing sped up
Features
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Skip anywhere.
Most torrent players download from the start and make you wait for the part you want. Drag to minute 47 and TorrentPlayer asks the fastest peers for minute 47 right away, and sends the most urgent pieces to a second peer too, so one slow peer cannot stall you.
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Starts in seconds.
Paste a magnet link, drop a
.torrentfile, or search public torrent indexers from inside the app. Each search marks a best pick and quietly preloads its first minutes, so pressing play starts at once. -
A queue that works ahead.
Everything you queue downloads in the background while you watch, and what is playing always comes first. Every item shows its speed, peers, progress, and time left, so you can see what will play smoothly next.
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Video, music, and audiobooks.
Films and series, albums in track order, courses in lecture order, and long audiobooks you can skip through chapter by chapter, all in one player with subtitles and keyboard controls.
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Private by design.
No telemetry, analytics, or accounts. Use your VPN app's tunnel, a built-in WireGuard connection that needs no admin rights, or a SOCKS5 proxy, all behind a kill switch that never falls back to your direct connection.
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Free, open source, no limits.
Video comes straight from the swarm, so speed depends only on the torrent's peers and your connection. No subscription, quality caps, speed tiers, or servers in between, and every line of code is open, the streaming engine included.
How it compares
Different tools, different trade-offs.
Where the video comes from, whether you can skip anywhere while it downloads, and what limits apply.
| TorrentPlayer | Stremio torrent add-ons | WebTorrent Desktop | qBittorrent + VLC | Debrid / cloud services | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Video comes from | Peers, directly to your app | A local streaming server, from peers | Peers, directly | Peers, directly | The provider’s servers |
| Stream and skip anywhere | Yes, the spot you skip to is fetched first | Yes (local cache); seek performance not documented | Yes | Plays in order only | Once the provider has fetched the file |
| Speed limited by | The swarm and your connection | The swarm and your connection | The swarm and your connection | The swarm and your connection | Your plan and the provider |
| Cost / account | Free, no account | Free tier with guest mode; paid plan optional | Free, no account | Free, no account | Paid plans |
| Fully open source | Yes (MIT or Apache-2.0) | Partly; the streaming server is proprietary | Yes (MIT) | Yes (GPL) | No |
| Built-in VPN and kill switch | Yes: WireGuard, VPN-adapter binding, SOCKS5 | No (bring your own VPN) | No | Proxy and interface binding; no built-in VPN | Not applicable (the service joins the swarm) |
| Queue that downloads ahead | Yes, sharing bandwidth with playback | Download manager on the paid plan | No | Yes (as a download client) | Cloud storage |
| Telemetry | None | Analytics and error monitoring (per its privacy policy) | Basic usage stats | None documented | Not checked |
| Maintained | Active | Active | Last release 2020 | Active | Operating |
Checked on 20 October 2026 against each product’s official site, repository, and documentation. Others are a better fit in places: Stremio and Kodi run on TVs, phones, and tablets, while TorrentPlayer is desktop only; players built on VLC or libmpv play more codecs today. Full comparison with sources · Torrent streaming apps compared
From the blog
Straight answers.
FAQ
Questions, answered.
Is it free?
Yes. TorrentPlayer is free and open source under the MIT or Apache-2.0 license, your choice, including its streaming engine. There are no subscriptions, ads, or paid tiers.
Do I need an account?
No. There is nothing to sign up for or log in to. Open the app and paste a magnet link, drop a .torrent file, or search.
How fast is it?
Playback starts in seconds and skips land in about a second: 0.27 s on a fast link and 0.70 s (median) on a public swarm in our measurements. Download speed comes from the swarm, so a torrent with few seeders and peers can only be as fast as they are. The queue shows each item’s peers and speed, and “Fastest first” puts the quickest torrents at the front.
What does it send over the network?
Only what it needs, with no telemetry, analytics, or crash reports:
- BitTorrent traffic for what you play or queue, directly with that torrent’s peers, trackers, and the DHT.
- Searches you run, sent to a public torrent index, which sees your search terms. Search is optional.
.torrentfiles you link to, fetched from where they are hosted.- A public-IP check for the status bar, with no identifiers. You can turn it off.
All of it goes through your selected VPN, WireGuard tunnel, or proxy, and nothing is sent while the kill switch is engaged.
Is it legal?
BitTorrent is a protocol, and TorrentPlayer is a player for it. You are responsible for having the rights to what you download and stream. TorrentPlayer is built for legal content such as open movies, public-domain media, Creative Commons music, and lectures. More in Is torrenting legal?
Where can I ask questions or get help?
Come talk on the TorrentPlayer Discord server: questions, ideas, and help with setup are all welcome there. To report a bug or request a feature, open an issue on GitHub. Security problems go through the private process in SECURITY.md, never Discord.
Which systems does it run on?
Windows 10 and 11 (x64), macOS 13 or later (Apple silicon and Intel), and Linux (x64, as AppImage, .deb, or .rpm). The player uses your system’s web engine, so it plays the formats that engine supports, commonly MP4, WebM, and MKV with H.264, VP9, or AV1 video and AAC, Opus, or MP3 audio. It warns you when a file uses a codec your system cannot decode.
Press play on any torrent.
Free, open source, and private. One download, nothing to sign up for.
Version 0.2.0 · Release notes
- Windows 10 and 1164-bit installer (.exe) 6 MB64-bit MSI 9 MB
- macOS 13 or laterApple silicon (.dmg) 9 MBIntel (.dmg) 9 MB
- Linux (x64)AppImage 87 MBDebian/Ubuntu (.deb) 10 MBFedora/openSUSE (.rpm) 10 MB
TorrentPlayer is an early preview. Installers are not code-signed yet, so the system asks once before the first start: on Windows, choose “More info → Run anyway”; on macOS, open the app once, then choose “Open Anyway” in System Settings → Privacy & Security.