menu
menu

FrostWire

Free Media Player, BitTorrent Client, and Downloader for Mac, Windows, and Linux

6.5

674 Votes

  • Category P2P
  • Program license Free (GPL)
  • Version 6.2.1.
  • Size 23.0 MB
  • Works under: Windows 10 / Windows 8.1 / Windows 8 / Windows 7 / Windows Vista / Windows XP
  • Program available in English
  • Program by FrostWire LLC

FrostWire is a BitTorrent client, a file sharer, and a download manager all in one.

LimeWire was at one time among the most popular BitTorrent clients around, but things changed, and as development of LimeWire started on a path to defunctness, FrostWire was born. FrostWire is a freeware and open-source BitTorrent client that’s an offshoot of LimeWire. If you need a versatile P2P client or liked LimeWire but not where it headed, then FrostWire is worth a look.

From the start, the goal of FrostWire was to be a less buggy and more feature-reach version of LimeWire, and that mission has been a success for the most part. FrostWire is a stable P2P client with an active open-source community that continues to refine it and add features to it. All of those extra features are what really set FrostWire apart from so many other BitTorrent clients.

As a BitTorrent client, FrostWire does what you’d expect. It supports torrent tracking and magnet association and can even fix broken torrent files. It has search capabilities, and there are a number of search sources built-in, but you can also expand that resource with your own sources.

FrostWire is also a file-sharing program. Rather than peer-to-peer sharing, you can direct share, which is particularly useful if you want to seed a large torrent or another large file directly to a friend. You can also share directly on a local network, and this feature can work alongside the P2P features so that multiple clients running on the same network aren’t working against each other in terms of downloading and seeding.

FrostWire is a download manager as well, and you can download video and music direct from websites like YouTube. In fact, the program’s search mechanism includes YouTube, SoundCloud, and other services as well as torrent trackers. You may search for a song and find it on YouTube or SoundCloud rather than a torrent or vice versa, and one-click downloads are the norm.

Perhaps not surprisingly at this point, FrostWire is also a file manager, and you can use it to store and organize your entire collection of multimedia. There’s a built-in player, so you can watch videos and listen to music directly from the application. There are file organization tools as well, and FrostWire even supports SoundCloud playlists. There’s even built-in support for Internet radio.

FrostWire is an excellent BitTorrent client but not without its issues. It does lack the professional polish of some of the more popular pay-for and ad-supported clients. Regular bug fixes are a good thing, but there will be stretches where the program downloads a patch every day or multiple times a day. The program also attempts to install some bloatware with the default installer, but you can block that.

Pros

  • Free BitTorrent client
  • P2P plus direct file sharing
  • Active open-source community

Cons

  • Some bloatware
  • Aggressive updating
Top 6 FrostWire Alternatives

uTorrent  3.6.46828

A slimmed-down BitTorrent client that is easy to use

LimeWire Music  4.6.0

You can easily download music with this software

Torrent downloader  1

Software that allows users to download unlimited torrent files

Ares Plus  2.7.3

A downloading tool known for its fast connection and speed

BitTorrent  7.11.0-build-46591

Software that allows users to download and play media from around the web

uTorrent Client for Windows 8  2.0.0.3

Lightweight BitTorrent client loaded with many features