Top 10 Cross-Platform BitTorrent Clients

Here is a list of top 10 free and cross-platform BitTorrent softwares, each of them is popular and worth a try. Apart from BitTorrent and µTorrent, other clients are open source softwares.

1. BitTorrent (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux)

BitTorrent was the first client written for BitTorrent protocol.

BitTorrent, Inc's software client allows you to quickly download high-quality digital content such as video, music, and games. Available in over 20 languages, it leverages our community of over 70 million users to securely deliver files to your PC faster than anything else out there. BitTorrent was written in Python. Since version 6.0 the BitTorrent client has been a rebranded version of µTorrent. And now it is no longer open source.

There's no special description needed for this old BitTorrent client.

2. µTorrent (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux)

µTorrent (or uTorrent) is the second most popular BitTorrent client (after the Chinese Xunlei).

µTorrent is a freeware, closed source BitTorrent client by BitTorrent, Inc. It is available for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. All versions are written in C++. Very tiny, efficient and full-featured.

A variety of skins and languages. At the same time, µTorrent has an App Studio.

3. Vuze (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux)

Vuze (previously Azureus) is a BitTorrent client written in Java, and uses the Azureus Engine. In addition to downloading data linked to by .torrent files, Azureus allows users to view, publish and share original DVD and HD quality video content.

Azureus offers multiple torrent downloads, queuing/priority systems (on torrents and files), start/stop seeding options and instant access to numerous pieces of information about your torrents. Azureus now features an embedded tracker easily set up and ready to use. Azureus also offers a range of plugins.

4. Transmission (Mac OS X, Linux)

Transmission is Ubuntu's default BitTorrent manager. It features a very simple, intuitive interface on top on an efficient, cross-platform back-end.

It has native Mac, GTK+ and Qt GUI clients, and it can be remote controlled by Web and Terminal clients. It supports add-ons.

Simple interface and Low resource usage are its best features.

5. BitTornado (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux)

BitTornado is a bittorrent client built on the original BitTorrent
client from BitTorrent Inc. This client features a console and curses mode, and is one of the original bittorrent clients created. It is programmed using Python, the interface is very simple and even a bit ugly.

But it's rather lightweight and easy to use.

6. Miro (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux)

Miro is an Internet television application, a wonderful video player and torrent downloader. You can search, download, and save videos from YouTube, Google Video, Blip, and more.

The program supports most known video files and offers sound and video, some in HD quality. Miro should be the most special one of these 10 softwares, it is a video player, BitTorrent manage is just one of its function.

It also supports RSS BitTorrent. When a new video is available, the program will notify and download if possible.

7. MLDonkey (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux)

MLDonkey is an open source, multi-protocol, p2p file sharing application that runs as a back-end server application on many platforms. It can be controlled through a user interface provided by one of many separate front-ends, including a Web interface, telnet interface and over a dozen native client programs.

Like Miro, BitTorrent isn't its only function. It supports the following network protocols, either partially or completely:
          o Ed2k
          o Overnet
          o BitTorrent
          o Kad Network
          o Direct Connect
          o HTTP/FTP

8. Deluge (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux)

Deluge is a full-featured, multi-platform, multi-interface BitTorrent client.
Meantime,

Deluge is a lightweight, Free Software, cross-platform BitTorrent client. It aims to be a lightweight, secure, and feature-rich client with Plugin System.

Portable version is available at PortableApps.

9. qBittorrent (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux)

BitTorrent client written in C++ and based on libtorrent-rasterbar with a Qt4
user interface. qBittorrent is a feature rich but lightweight client that is
very similar to uTorrent.

The qBittorrent project aims to provide a Free Software alternative to µtorrent. Additionally, qBittorrent runs and provides the same features on all major platforms (Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, OS/2, FreeBSD).

10. KTorrent (Windows, Linux)

KTorrent is a BitTorrent client written in C++ for KDE using the Qt user interface toolkit. It is maintained in the KDE Extragear.

Obviously, KTorrent supports such basic features
as downloading, uploading and seeding files on the BitTorrent network.
However, lots of other additional features and intuitive GUI should make
KTorrent a good choice for everyone. Some features are available as plugins
hence you should make sure you have the ones you need enabled. It takes very little system resources.

Personally, I'm using Transmission & MLDonkey under Ubuntu, both of them have a low resource usage, especially MLDonkey, if you control it just via web, You can hardly feel its presence. Although µTorrent is not an open-source software, I still like it and hope for the improvement of its Linux client.