Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to SafariWhen comparing Transmission vs Deluge, the Slant community recommends Transmission for most people. In the question“What are the best Torrent clients?” Transmission is ranked 2nd while Deluge is ranked 3rd. The most important reason people chose Transmission is:
Transmission is free, ad-less and open source software licensed under GPL with parts under MIT with source code available [here](https://trac.transmissionbt.com/browser/trunk). Being open source allows anyone to check if the software has no malicious code, is secure and respects privacy.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Free, ad-less and open source
Transmission is free, ad-less and open source software licensed under GPL with parts under MIT with source code available here. Being open source allows anyone to check if the software has no malicious code, is secure and respects privacy.
Pro Very lightweight
Transmission-gtk uses only 17 mb of RAM in idle state and 24 mb in download state.
Pro Very minimalistic, straightforward design philosophy
Transmission is great for getting things done without looking too much under the hood. It still has advanced options, they're just tucked away from sight.
Pro Native Mac, GTK+ and Qt interfaces provide seamless integration with OSX and Linux systems
Transmission works well on OSX and various distributions of Linux due to having interfaces natively developed for those operating systems instead of haphazardly ported.
The Mac interface is written in Objective-C, uses dock badges and Growl notifications while the GTK+ interface follows GNOME Human Interface Guidelines and has support for popup notifications, desktop sounds, and a system tray.
There's also an unofficial port of Transmission-Qt for Windows.
Pro Full-featured
Transmission covers basics such as Prioritization, Selective Downloading, DHT, PEX, LPD and Magnet URIs. It has graphical, web and command line interfaces. It includes MSE/PE for security. Has UPnP, NAT-PMP, NAT traversal for automatic router configuration. Has UDP tracker and µTP data transfer protocol support. Even covers IPv6, Web seeding and Local Peer Discovery. And it auto-updates.
Pro Has a command line interface and a daemon
Transmission can be used in text-only mode via transmission-cli that includes a daemon (transmission-daemon), a CLI and a web client (accessed on http://localhost:9091 by default).
Pro Works great on a seedbox with its web interface
Transmission has a web interfaces that can be used to remotely control torrents. It's great as a seedbox (a dedicated private server for uploading and downloading content) due to built-in webseed support.
Pro Pre-installed on multiple Linux distributions, including Ubuntu
For those who prefer Linux, the Ubuntu OS comes with Transmission already installed, so you can get your torrents up and running immediately.
Pro Headless software
Just put it on your server, SBC or even your old phone and you have your own torrent server.
Pro Functionality can be extended with a variety of plugins
As is, Deluge is very stripped down, but its functionality can be increased via plugins. As such Deluge can have only the functionality that is needed and skip any other reducing resource usage.
Pro Free, ad-less and open source
Deluge is free, ad-less and open source software licensed under GPL with source code available here. Being open source allows anyone to check if the software has no malicious code, is secure and respects privacy.
Pro Can encrypt traffic
MSE/PE or Message Stream Encryption/Protocol Encryption is BitTorrent traffic encryption method designed to improve privacy. It also attempts to make it harder to identify BitTorrent traffic by third parties such as ISPs that can choose to throttle it.
Pro Good web UI
Deluge has a web interfaces that can be used to remotely control torrents.
Pro Full-featured
Deluge covers basics such as Prioritization, Selective Downloading, DHT, PEX, LPD and Magnet URIs. It includes MSE/PE for security. It has graphical, web and command line interfaces. Has UPnP, NAT-PMP, NAT traversal for automatic router configuration. Has UDP tracker data transfer protocol support. Even covers IPv6 and proxy servers.
Pro Lightweight
Deluge weighs under 15MB.
Pro Has a command line interface and a daemon
Deluge can be run in text-only mode via the deluge-console command. Requires first running the deluge daemon deluged. Utilizing the deluge daemon deluged allows remotely connecting to it, and using any front-end interface.
Pro Portable
µTorrent can be run without having to be installed. It can be put on an external storage device (such as a USB drive) and run directly from it. A portable version of Deluge can be downloaded from SourceForge.
Pro Neat and clean look
The GTK elements aren't the best looking in the world, but they are very tidy, minimal and easy on the eyes.
Pro Utorrent compatible
You can download using both clients µTorrent and Deluge on any supported operating system.
Cons
Con No preload magnet metadata
Transmission is unable to preload magnet metadata.
Con If data is corrupted, torrent file has to be re-added
If you delete a file that belongs to (finished or not) torrent, torrent will remain in "corrupted data" state and only way to restore it (aside from restoring the actual data file) is to find the original file and re-add it.
Con No broadcatching support
Broadcatching is a method of automatically downloading content as soon as it's available. Broadcatching in BitTorrent clients is usually implemented via RSS. Transmission requires manually selecting each download.
Con No super-seeding support
Super-seeding is an algorithm used to allow downloaders become uploaders quicker. Transmission lacks support for this functionality.
Con The app is hiding too much information
While the app is clearly going for minimalism, some users might feel that the default window that consists of just torrents and their progress bars might provide a bit too little information or functionality. For example, even accessing file lists requires opening up a separate window and navigating to a specific tab.
Con No tracker exchange
Tracker exchange functionality allows peers to exchange information about trackers of a given file. It is another way of ensuring that the file is downloaded from the optimal source. Transmission lacks this functionality.
Con No embedded tracker
An embedded tracker allows turning the client into a server offering an easy way of sharing files with others. Transmission lacks embedded tracker support so another method of sharing or different client has to be used to share files.
Con Written in Python, uses a lot of CPU on fast downloads
Apparently, the speed bottleneck is Python.
Con No built-in search engine
Built-in search engines allow finding torrents to download right from withing the torrent client. Transmission lacks such functionality.
Con No proxy server support
Con No built-in search engine
Built-in search engines allow finding torrents to download right from withing the torrent client. Deluge lacks such functionality.
Con No super-seeding support out of the box
Super-seeding is an algorithm used to allow downloaders become uploaders quicker. Deluge lacks support for this functionality out of the box. However, the ltconfig plugin can enable this setting: http://forum.deluge-torrent.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=42887.
Con Hasn't been updated in a while
As of writing of this, there has not been a new release in ~1.5 years.
Con Files can't be downloaded sequentially by default
Sequential downloading can be used to stream media files such as video and audio while the download is still in progress. By default, Deluge requires waiting until the complete file is downloaded before it's ready for use.
But it should be mentioned that there exists a plugin: https://github.com/JohnDoee/deluge-streaming for video streaming from Deluge.
Con Demon not lightweight as expected
While it has been improved a lot in the last years, when it's used in "headless" mode, the python demon still tends to use more resources than expected. It's noticeable especially on devices like the raspberry, and for instance, rtorrent and transmission use much less CPU.
Con Includes minor UI issues
Deluge has minor UI issues such as presenting "delete with data" as the most prominent button when removing a torrent from a list of downloads, or the way it resets its size when maximized from tray forcing a resize each time.
Con Does not preload magnet data
If a magnet URI is used there's no way to get information about contents or perform any kind of actions (such as selecting what to download) before the download has started.
Con No web seeding suport
Web seeding support allows downloading file parts from an HTTP source alongside the swarm. It's usually used for long-term seeding and easing some of the load on web hosts that supply direct downloads by offering a BitTorrent download as an alternative while still ensuring that the file is always available in its entirety regardless of the swarm. Deluge lacks this functionality.
Con Keeps Unwanted Files (Poor selective Download)
Deluge creates all the files even those that you marked "not download". Making your directories messy.
This is very bad when you want to create a drive specific for large files and you are unable to delete or move small and unwanted files, such as a video partition with large allocation unit.
[qbittorrent doesn't do that]
Con Doesn't shows all time uploaded and downloaded data
Con Can't "force start" downloads
There's no way to manually override settings for download queuing that's available in other torrent clients. For example, if there are 2 files in the download list and the software is configured to queue just one at a time there's no way to force a download of both without changing the settings. A workaround plugin can be found here.
Con Lacks µTP transfer protocol support
Con Naive search function
Searching for torrents or files within torrents is difficult because it relies on the user to input the exact title with the right index for each character.
Con CPU usage does not scale well with number of torrents
Deluge uses ~10% of one Core i7-2600 core with ~1700 torrents loaded, even if all the torrents are idle.
Con No tracker exchange
Tracker exchange functionality allows peers to exchange information about trackers of a given file. It is another way of ensuring that the file is downloaded from the optimal source. Deluge lacks this functionality.
Con No embedded tracker
An embedded tracker allows turning the client into a server offering an easy way of sharing files with others. Deluge lacks embedded tracker support so another method of sharing or different client has to be used to share files.
Con Doesn't seed
Con No built-in broadcatching support
Broadcatching is a method of automatically downloading content as soon as it's available. Broadcatching in BitTorrent clients is usually implemented via RSS. Deluge requires manually selecting each download by default. Fortunately, there are multiple plugins available that add this functionality with the possible caveat of plugins not having the same quality standard as the client itself.
