A fork of the LimeWire client, FrostWire used to be a user-favorite option for BitTorrent downloading. In 2018, however, Frostwire went offline for a few days after a DMCA request from a content provider caused the service’s Android app to be taken off the Google Play Store. Frostwire came back a few days after with a revised app, but as of 2023, most users are giving the app a very low rating and complain that they can no longer use the platform to effectively find downloads.

As a result, it seems likely that Frostwire is no longer a viable option for most people. Regardless of why you use (or used to use) the app, there are several FrostWire alternatives that may offer you a better experience. Here we’ll take a look at those and why they might be the choice for you.

Best FrostWire alternatives

FrostWire is primarily popular as an Android app through the Google Play Store. So we’ve chosen alternative options with a Google Play Store app currently available as minimum criteria. Additionally, all of these options have good ratings (4.0 stars or above) and at least 500,000 downloads. We’ll go into detail on each of these below, but in case you’re short on time:

Here’s a list of the best FrostWire alternatives:

  • BitTorrent
  • Flud
  • uTorrent
  • Vuze
  • TorrDroid
  • WeTorrent
  • Torrent Downloader
  • zetaTorrent
  • aTorrent

Warning: Always use a VPN with torrent apps

Regardless of why you decide to torrent, it’s important to protect your privacy and security online when you use a torrent app. Not only can your ISP see all of the content that you download through torrents, anyone sharing the P2P network can gather information about you, such as your IP address, files that you torrent, and potentially your location and personal information.

The best way to protect your identity while torrenting is by using a Virtual Private Network (VPN). By routing your connection through a private tunnel and assigning you a new IP address, a VPN makes it so that nobody sharing the VPN network, or your ISP, can see any of your activity. Additionally, as ISPs often block or significantly slow down torrent traffic, a VPN will help ensure your torrents are fast.

Of the options we’ve tested for torrent downloading, NordVPN offers the best experience. Not only are servers fast and reliable, but NordVPN also has strict no-logs policies designed to ensure your identity is kept safe from everyone.

Best FrostWire alternatives available on Android

FrostWire users can find all of these alternative BitTorrent clients on the Google Play Store. Many of them are also available on Windows and may be available on other operating systems, including Linux, Mac, and iOS.

There are no hidden terms—just contact support within 30 days if you decide NordVPN isn’t right for you, and you’ll get a full refund. Start your NordVPN trial here.

Here are the best FrostWire alternatives

BitTorrent

  • Available platforms: Windows, Mac, Android
  • Android version rating: 4.5
  • Last Android version update: December 5, 2022
  • Free or paid on Android?: Free, ad-supported version with $2.99 ad-free option

Considering that FrostWire and most of its alternatives are all BitTorrent clients, it should come as no surprise that BitTorrent’s own client is a viable option for torrent users. BitTorrent has a client for Windows, Mac, and Android and is highly rated among current users. Most people who use the Android version turn to it for the name recognition as well as the overall simplicity of the app.

Find out more on the BitTorrent website.

Flud

  • Available platforms: Android
  • Android version rating: 4.6
  • Last Android version update: February 20, 2020
  • Free or paid on Android?: Free, ad-supported version

Perhaps the only bad thing about Flud is that it hasn’t been updated in over two years, as of this time of writing. That said, it’s still highly popular and extremely feature-rich. There’s an ad-supported version that provides support for a lot of different torrent uses, including μTP, PeX, and magnet link support. The app also has NAT-PMP, DHT, and UPnP support. Flud does not have an official website, and you won’t find any mention of it on the developer’s homepage either. There is a separate website set up for community translation assistance, however.

μTorrent

  • Available platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux, Android
  • Android version rating: 4.6
  • Last Android version update: December 13, 2022
  • Free or paid on Android?: Free, ad-supported version with a $3.99 ad-free option

BitTorrent owns μTorrent, so it should be no surprise that things are somewhat similar between this app and BitTorrent’s other client. Still, μTorrent is its own thing, and there are differences that you may want to investigate. The key differences are that μTorrent is more regularly maintained and updated and that there’s a Linux version that doesn’t exist for BitTorrent. BitTorrent has also sneakily inserted Bitcoin coin miners in their μTorrent software in the past, but there is no known coin miner in the current tool.

Read more on the μTorrent website.

Vuze

  • Available platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux, Android
  • Android version rating: 3.8
  • Last Android version update: March 4, 2016 (at this time of writing)
  • Free or paid on Android?: Free, ad-supported version with a $3.99 ad-free option

Vuze has been around for some time, and its frog symbol is highly recognizable at this point. Current users enjoy its ease of use and interface, while it has a fairly standard set of features for torrent users. Unlike some of the options, Vuze also has a torrent search and discovery option, as well as Wi-Fi-only settings that prevent it from using up precious mobile data allotments. Perhaps the biggest downside to this app is that (at this time of writing) it has not been updated in a long time. 

Read more on the Vuze website.

TorrDroid

  • Available platforms: Android
  • Android version rating: 4.4
  • Last Android version update: December 27, 2022
  • Free or paid on Android?: Free, ad-supported version with a $2.79 ad-free option

TorrDroid is exactly as it sounds: A torrent app specifically for Android. There are no other options to use this app outside of Android. It’s highly favored for its interface, which is extremely simple and user-friendly. The app is designed to streamline the process as much as possible with a search function. It’s also designed to open both .torrent and magnet links, supports simultaneous downloads, and allows users to play videos before the download is complete.

WeTorrent

  • Available platforms: Android
  • Android version rating: 4.7
  • Last Android version update: August 23, 2018 (at this time of writing)
  • Free or paid on Android?: Free, ad-supported version with $2.99 ad-free option

WeTorrent is offered up by developer Tap.pm, which oddly specializes in helping other developers monetize their apps with built-in games. The WeTorrent app probably has one of the most attractive UIs of any torrent app you will find. Outside of that, it’s somewhat feature-limited compared to some of the other options on the list but easily supports magnet and .torrent files. The most prominent feature it lacks is a search or discovery function for torrents, so users will need to source their torrent files elsewhere for download.

Torrent Downloader

  • Available platforms: Android
  • Android version rating: 3.6
  • Last Android version update: September 17, 2021
  • Free or paid on Android?: Free, ad-supported version

Torrent Downloader is about as simple a program as it gets. The interface is extremely no-frills, while the features are also run-of-the-mill. You can control every aspect of your torrent download, even down to banning connected peers and viewing network activity. Similar to WeTorrent and a few other options on the list, there is no search function for torrent or magnet links. Torrent Downloader includes a local search option, but you’ll need to find your torrent links elsewhere.

zetaTorrent

  • Available platforms: Android
  • Android version rating: 4.5
  • Last Android version update: July 28, 2018
  • Free or paid on Android?: Free, ad-supported version with a $2.99 ad-free pro version that has additional features

One of the only options with a built-in web browser, zetaTorrent includes a few other unique features. Not only can you download .torrent and magnet links, but zetaTorrent also includes an ad blocker. The pro version also includes web authentification, proxy support, and an IP filter. The app also includes an RSS feed to help discover new torrents. Additionally, zetaTorrent offers a wifi file transfer feature that lets you upload or download files from a web browser on your PC.

Note: this appears to have been pulled from the Google Play store permanently, so you will need to source it from a third-party APK website, which you should only do if you know where to source them without running into malware.

aTorrent

  • Available platforms: Android
  • Android version rating: 4.3
  • Last Android version update: September 20, 2021 (at this time of writing)
  • Free or paid on Android?: Free, ad-supported version with a $1.99 ad-free option. Most people recommend against upgrading to the paid version – so beware and do your research.

aTorrent is one of the more heavily downloaded options on this list, with over 10 million downloads on Android. It’s also one of the only options on the list that is Android-exclusive, so you cannot use this app on other operating systems. You can use aTorrent for most torrenting needs, but it is worth noting that this app is now getting a lot of poor reviews, which is why it appears at the bottom of this list. The app also provides parallel downloading, and Wi-Fi-only downloads, and supports half a dozen protocols, but you may struggle to make it work according to the latest reviews.

The service’s developer is Russian, and we can no longer locate an official website. This may indicate that it is no longer being developed and maintained.

What happened to FrostWire?

On September 27, 2018, FrostWire updated its website to state that its development team would be closing shop on the project. In a blog post on their WordPress site, the team explained that the primary reason for their decision was that Google had removed their app from the Google Play Store.

According to FrostWire, the DMCA request showed the copyrighted material, which the complainant stated was uploaded to the FrostWire app. FrostWire countered to Google that this is technically impossible, as the FrostWire app cannot host content. However, Google stood firm in its refusal to reinstate FrostWire to the Google Play Store.

FrostWire decided to end development because the app’s team relies on the Play Store app. According to FrostWire, 80 percent of its users are now on Android, making it impossible for the team to continue reasonable operation and development without the revenue stream available through Google Play.

The team noted that the more recently developed centralized app store monopoly that Google and Apple create makes it effectively impossible to continue to operate if an app is removed.

The team left the app’s code available for other developers who wish to fork the software and continue to develop it on their own.

Since that time, however, FrostWire has come back online, and it appears its app was returned to the Google Play Store. FrostWire did not appear to make any comment on its return via social media or its website’s blog, so its return may have occurred after working out its issues with Google. The service now appears to focus heavily on free-to-play music from music artists who have made their music available at no cost.

FrostWire is itself a fork of the popular LimeWire tool, and was available to torrent users for over a decade. Those who want to download the latest version of FrostWire for Android, Windows, Mac, Ubuntu, Linux, or Java7/Java8 systems can find it on the FrostWire website.

That said, torrent sites and applications are often used by consumers to share pirated videos, music, books, and computer programs. Sharing or downloading any content that is not yours - and that is subject to copyright restrictions - is against the law, and we do not condone the use of torrenting apps or VPNs for this purpose.

To use torrenting apps legally, you should stick to sharing files that you have full ownership of. This could be original music, work documents, creative writing, videos or photos, public domain content, open-source software, or anything else that you own and want to distribute or share.

To conclude, it is legal to both download and use torrenting apps. However, the way that you use torrenting apps may be illegal where you live if you opt to engage in piracy.

This creates a security risk because it’s possible that some of the people in your torrent swarm could be cybercriminals. Once they have your home IP address, hackers could probe your home IP for open ports. They can also monitor what you download over BitTorrent.

If they find an open port, they could then use that opening to search for other vulnerabilities in your network. This includes things like weak or default passwords on internet-connected devices such as baby monitors, security cameras, and other smart home devices such as smart lights, kettles, etc.

By using a VPN, you conceal your real IP address from other torrent users. A VPN also prevents your ISP or local networks from detecting that you are accessing torrent repositories. This gives you privacy and ensures that your home is protected against malicious users.

Additionally, it is always wise to scan any downloaded file with an antivirus scanner before opening it on your computer. Doing this can help protect your computer from any malicious code that may be present.