New Music, podcasts, and audiobooks
Stream at the speed of the swarm
Skip to any moment, instantly.
TorrentStream streams any torrent, video or audio, straight from the people sharing it. Playback starts in seconds, and when you jump ahead it fetches that exact moment first, so you are back in under a second.
Early preview. How to get a build
- Free & open source
- No account
- No telemetry
- Windows
- macOS
- Linux
Built for skipping
Stream. Skip. Instantly.
Most torrent players download from the beginning and make you wait for the part you want. TorrentStream’s own streaming engine is built for playback: drag the seek bar to minute 47 and it asks the fastest peers for minute 47 right away, sending the most urgent pieces to a second peer too, so one slow peer cannot stall you.
- Skip on a fast link
- 0.27 smedian, local seeder at 8 MiB/s
- Skip on a public swarm
- 0.70 smedian, about 600 peers
- Start-up on a fast link
- 0.35 smedian, local seeder at 8 MiB/s
- Start-up on a public swarm
- 1.2–2.8 sacross three runs
Time until the player has the data it needs, measured with the bundled benchmark tool from an empty cache, every skip in a fresh session. Public swarm: Ubuntu 24.04 ISO, capped at 10 MiB/s. Magnet links currently default to the embedded librqbit engine, which is slower to skip; Settings → Advanced → Engine switches them to TorrentStream’s engine. Methodology
Features
Everything you need to just press play
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Instant skipping
Jump anywhere, any time. The spot you skip to is fetched first, so playback resumes in under a second instead of waiting for the download to catch up.
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Full speed, no limits
Data comes straight from the people sharing it, limited only by the swarm and your connection. No servers in the middle, no subscriptions, ads, quality caps, storage quotas, or speed tiers.
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Smart queue
Everything you queue downloads in the background, and what’s playing always gets bandwidth first. Live speed, peers, progress, and time left per item, green when playable. In order or fastest first; pause any item.
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Video & audio New
Films and series, and now music, podcasts, and audiobooks. One player, one queue, the same instant skipping.
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Private by design
No telemetry, analytics, or accounts. Built-in WireGuard with no admin rights or separate VPN app, plus VPN-adapter binding and SOCKS5, all behind a kill switch that never falls back to a direct connection.
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Search built in
Search public torrent indexers from inside the app, ranked by how watchable each result is. Or paste a magnet link, or drop a
.torrentfile on the window.
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.
| TorrentStream | 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 TorrentStream is desktop only; players built on VLC or libmpv play more codecs today. Full comparison with sources
Privacy
Your traffic, and nothing else
No telemetry, analytics, crash reporting, or accounts. TorrentStream does not phone home. This is everything it sends over the network:
- 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.
FAQ
Questions, answered
Is it free?
Yes. TorrentStream 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 under 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.
Is it legal?
BitTorrent is a protocol, and TorrentStream is a player for it. You are responsible for having the rights to what you download and stream. TorrentStream is built for legal content such as open movies, public-domain media, Creative Commons music, and lectures.
Which platforms 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. For Windows, macOS, and Linux.
TorrentStream is an early preview with no signed releases yet. Signed installers will be published on the Releases page. Until then, unsigned test builds are available for every platform: open the latest run and download the installer for your system. Expect a SmartScreen or Gatekeeper warning.