Why is qBittorrent so much better than utorrent?

[phytotech]

Hello:
New user of qbittorent. Moved from uTorrent. Been using qbittorent for a month or so now. Been using uTorrent for years.
First, I really love the search feature. Having that integrated into the torrent client really makes it so much easier/better to use than uTorrent.
But the thing that really blows my mind is how much faster qbittorent is in starting a torrent download and even the DL speeds are WAY faster than in uTorrent. I have never seen download speeds like these (today saw 60 mbs download for a file) on uTorrent. The connections almost always start within seconds, too. While in uTorrent it may take a number of minutes to connect, often days to finally start a download.

My question is can someone explain why qbittorrent is so different from utorrent in torrent downloads? I wish I had known about qbittorrent before! I am not afraid of a technical description if that is what it takes to explain this difference in the two torrent clients.

Thanks to all who contribute to making this project available.

[LilTroy]

Hello:
New user of qbittorent. Moved from uTorrent. Been using qbittorent for a month or so now. Been using uTorrent for years.
First, I really love the search feature. Having that integrated into the torrent client really makes it so much easier/better to use than uTorrent.
But the thing that really blows my mind is how much faster qbittorent is in starting a torrent download and even the DL speeds are WAY faster than in uTorrent. I have never seen download speeds like these (today saw 60 mbs download for a file) on uTorrent. The connections almost always start within seconds, too. While in uTorrent it may take a number of minutes to connect, often days to finally start a download.

My question is can someone explain why qbittorrent is so different from utorrent in torrent downloads? I wish I had known about qbittorrent before! I am not afraid of a technical description if that is what it takes to explain this difference in the two torrent clients.

Thanks to all who contribute to making this project available.

Yes, qBittorrent beats μTorrent in nearly every department. It's more performant, actually respects your privacy, has a much safer security track record, and is just better overall. Comparitech recently did a qBittorrent vs μTorrent shoot-out last year and qBittorrent won by a landslide. Am I surprised? Not one bit (no pun intended). In fact, regardless of publication, literally every single head-to-head comparison I've seen over the years has decidedly crowned qBittorrent the winner over μTorrent. It's not a coincidence!

As far as performance is concerned I've never seen the two clients formally benchmarked against each other but their respective performance has been roughly compared before. The difference can be plainly observed by anyone… qBittorrent is noticeably faster. It probably has more performance optimizations in its code particularly on the backend. The core library that it's based on is called libtorrent. Both clients are written in C++ except μTorrent is proprietary software/closed source. qBittorrent is fully open source. Arvid Norberg wrote libtorrent and for many years was the chief architect over at BitTorrent Inc. so he'd be the right guy to ask about this (along with qBittorrent's current maintainer, Sledgehammer).

There are only a few areas where μTorrent has the advantage over qBittorrent. Platform support being one of them. They have an Android app which I use occasionally. They also offer web-based clients (μTorrent Lite & μTorrent Web) and their remote management is more flexible. But, that's about it. While μTorrent is still hands down the most widely used BitTorrent client in existence over the years its reputation has taken a big hit. Being closed source means that its code isn't open to inspection so it offers zero transparency. Worse, it's adware & bundleware which makes its proprietary development model even more damning. About 10 years ago one of their partners defaulted to installing a crypto miner on its users' devices. Last I checked Malwarebytes still flags the installer and I imagine other AV apps do as well. It's also insulting that they want you to pay for a premium subscription plan just to remove its ads. They're charging $5 per year for it. Instead I just block all of its advertisements using my VPN's built-in ad blocker (which internally utilizes DNS filtering). Not only do ads slow down the client they use more of your device's resources, network bandwidth, drain your battery faster, track you and—worst of all—they potentially open the door to a nasty attack vector known as malvertising.

To expound on the latter a little more malvertising injects malicious ads that silently drop malware onto your system. The scary thing is that in many cases no user-interaction is even required. Meaning you don't necessarily have to click/tap the ad to become infected. You can be compromised automatically, usually triggered through a 0day exploit, when the malicious ad loads. μTorrent's ads are deceptive & annoyingly intrusive. On mobile they're sometimes even layered on top of each other and can go full screen (see below).

Screenshot_20240923_190421_Torrent-ezgif.com-resize.png (98 KiB) Viewed 6598 times

Screenshot_20240923_190401_VerizonAppManager-ezgif.com-resize.png (95.94 KiB) Viewed 6598 times

Screenshot_20240923_190259_Torrent-ezgif.com-resize.png (167.7 KiB) Viewed 6598 times

On the other hand, qBittorrent contains nothing sketchy whatsoever. There are no ads, trackers, crypto miners, browser hijackers, or shady components bundled into the installer. Anyone that is able to read its code can independently verify this for themselves. Users are strongly encouraged to make a donation to this great project!

[Peter]

Kinda off-topic but if you have an Android device, you can just go into your Network settings, look for Private DNS and input this: dns.adguard-dns.com
Free adblock in every app, phone-wide.

Unfortunately for "normal users" (ie.: my sister, mother) this pretty much "breaks the phone" since they can't tap scam links on Facebook for example. Go figure. I have been using it for many years now. I even subscribed to AdGuard at some point to support them, but the DNS is more than enough. I didn't like running a fake VPN profile on the phone (its what their app does), etc. But their private DNS is *chefs kiss*.

[LilTroy]

Kinda off-topic but if you have an Android device, you can just go into your Network settings, look for Private DNS and input this: dns.adguard.com
Free adblock in every app, phone-wide.

Unfortunately for "normal users" (ie.: my sister, mother) this pretty much "breaks the phone" since they can't tap scam links on Facebook for example. Go figure. I have been using it for many years now. I even subscribed to AdGuard at some point to support them, but the DNS is more than enough. I didn't like running a fake VPN profile on the phone (its what their app does), etc. But their private DNS is *chefs kiss*.

You could also set AdGuard DNS on your router so that your entire network benefits. No need to set it on the phone then. Trouble is many cheap consumer routers don't support encrypted DNS and that's what most people own. So, you'll end up getting ad blocking but all of your queries will be visible. I've also used AdGuard DNS on my Android phone (has built-in encrypted DNS-over-TLS/DoT) but the name server address I used was dns.adguard-dns.com. That's their default filtering server which will block both ads & trackers.

[Peter]

but the name server address I used was...

Yeah my mistake, sorry, edited my post. I should have checked on my phone or in Google. It happens. Thankfully you can't set it wrong because it will complain right away.

[LilTroy]

but the name server address I used was...

Yeah my mistake, sorry, edited my post. I should have checked on my phone or in Google. It happens. Thankfully you can't set it wrong because it will complain right away.

Yep. It's all good.