VPN for Torrenting

Recently mullvad stopped the port forwarding, are there some other trustworthy VPN to do Torrenting out there or others solutions to do torrenting with Mullvad?

114 comments

I'm deeply sorry, but I had to mention i2p torrenting, it might become more popular soon.
Sidenote: I2P torrenting doesn't require a vpn or port forwarding, and is indeed more private.
- Can you elaborate on this, it's the first time I've heard of I2P torrenting
  
  It seems to be a special torrent client that work similar to tor (guessing with less hops though) and bounce encrypted traffic on special "i2p routers". Not sure if they do the onion style encryption of thor.
- I2P torrenting with a seedbox is the undeniable future. It will probably just take a year or so to reach critical mass. It's slow now because a lack of mass.
  The main relevant difference between I2P and Tor is that Tor runs on donated bandwidth and therefore can't scale: the more it is used, the more volunteers are needed to donate bandwidth. Which is why they aren't happy with people torrenting.
  I2P is P2P so the more people use it, the faster it becomes. Which is why they really want people to use it for torrenting.
  
  Why do you see i2p torrenting becoming popular? I think it's probably too much hassle for 99% of people.

ProtonVPN. It's an organization built around principles of privacy, so I use them a lot and support them as much as I can. I have their VPN on a docker container with gluetun.
- I'm a proton unlimited subscriber and I love it. Simplelogin, e2ee emails, vpn, all amazing. Their tech support team is awesome and they have always been fast and helpful when assisting me with my computers.
  
  E2ee emails is only between proton and proton btw, proton to gmail (or anyone else) is not emcrypted by default, you'd need to pgp it yourself for that.
  I know that may sound obvious, but you'd be surprised how many people don't know that so I just wanted to drop a heads up just in case anyone reading was unaware.
- Plus a great mail provider to escape the Gmail.
  
  I like proton mail and use it for my daily, but I've heard rumors it's a fed honeypot. Seems like a good choice to escape corporate big data collection, but probably want to avoid it for anything of questionable legality.
- +1 for Proton. I also have their mail for all my domains. Works wonders and feels trustworthy, for whatever that's worth.
- Why does it need to be in a container? Also the Linux GUI client has no port forwarding options
  
  It doesn't need to be in a container, but it works well in one for my use case. I use it in a headless server running OpenMediaVault with qBittorrent and a bunch of arr apps. The apps are all in containers sharing a network with port forwarding set up, so that none of them leak any DNS information.
  
  Running it with Gluetun makes me think they are just using that container to attach other containers to a VPN, so only the services that need to be behind a VPN.
  I use a similar setup on my server, where all of my media is virtualized and containerized.
- Yeah I'm moving to Proton when my current Surfshark membership expires.

AirVPN is a good one
- This is what I switched to after Mullvad removed their port forwarding. It works fine so far. Interestingly, the Android app reminds me of a Geocities page circa 2002.
- I've been using airvpn for years
- But arent they removing port forwarding soon?
  
  No they've committed to keeping it. But they have an issue with port availability so they'll probably need to move to a per server allocation eventually. Recently they reduced the allocation per user down to 5 from 20 though just to delay when they run out.

I use Mullvad and do not need to forward any ports for torrenting.
- You do if you want to seed or use private trackers otherwise you can make any incoming connections.
  
  5 € VPN + 5 € seedbox is a great combo. I would swear Mullvad is even faster now that they stopped supporting PF.
  
  I'm still seeding using Mullvad right now...

Air VPN as it supports port forwarding. PF isn't as important if you only download popular new content, as there are usually enough connectable seeders on popular torrents. But PF is absolutely crucial if you want to be able to obtain old or rare content or if you use private trackers.
I'm honestly baffled that so many are still recommending Mullvad after they made such a stunning reversal of their friendly policy towards p2p by removing port forwarding. I wouldn't trust them as far as I can throw them.
- Switched to AirVPN. It's pretty good so far. Not great for general browsing because you get a ton of captchas.
- Dude it's insane how many people here A) don't even know what port forwarding is and B) tell others port forwarding isn't needed at all.
  Where does all this confusion come from?
- I used to use Air but the speeds were absolutely abysmal. 2-3 MB/s vs 50-55 MB/s on mullvad. Has the situation improved at all?
  
  for me it was 70MB/s on mullvad and 50MB/s on AirVPN
- Their decision to block port forwarding was unfortunate, but understandable. I've been using it for the past year and when I first started, I rarely ran into any issues with being blacklisted. Now it's a nearly daily occurrence. I don't know how true it is, but Mullvad claimed that much of the activity leading to blocked IPs came from activity related to port forwarding. If that's true, then I'd say the decision is good. Like others have said, torrenting is still possible without port forwarding, but it's also true that rarer content and private trackers become difficult. Ultimately there was no perfect solution here.
- Mullvad is nice because you don't need to make an account or sign up with an ID or phone number. Plus you can pay with monero.
  
  but no PF, so it doesn't matter how nice it is.

Private Internet Access allows port forwarding
- They used to be Denver-based, but got bought out by a shitty British mega corporation with shit policies, so I dropped them for Nord, which also sucked because their servers were slow.
  
  I though Nord has always struggled with security. They had a breach a couple years ago right? Customer info got leaked?
- I've had PIA for years. It has always worked so I haven't had a reason to try anything else. I think its like $2/mo paid yearly.
- You have to use a server outside the US for port forwarding though. Canada works.

AirVPN customer since 7-8 years. If you want some flashy highly polished website and client which could win design awards, look elsewhere. Otherwise it’s top notch. They have an easy to use client and support for both native WireGuard and OpenVPN.
- Just switched from Mullvad to AirVPN last weekend, and I agree with everything you said. So far, no issues.
- 100 Euros/3 years, even their prices are good!

I have been using PIA. They changed owners awhile back and there were some concerns about if they would continue to NOT keep logs. They have maintained that standard and I’ve had zero issues torrenting with them.
- They sell even an antivirus, I don't think it's trustworthy company. In my personal opinion nowadays antivirus are a scam.
  
  Why do you think antiviruses are a scam?
- Is it possible to use port forward with gluetun and pia do you know?
  
  I used PIA years ago and they supported OpenVPN and Wireguard so you should be able to configure them in gluetun with that, but I've only had one half-assed attempt at trying out containers at this point so take this with a grain of salt.
  
  If you find the answer please let me know

i believe windscribe is good, but i havent done enough research to be confidwnt

Mullvad vpn is great. They offer different ways to pay so you can maintain privacy and you only pay for the amount of time you want.
- OP specifically mentioned moving away from Mullvad.
  
  yeah, I thought I deleted my reply already. My bad
- Why are people downvoting? Is there something wrong with Mullvad? As far as I was aware, it was one of the good one out there...
  
  Because I responded before reading the body of the post. OP specifically asked for a VPN that is not Mullvad. I thought i deleted the reply, but I guess it is still visible.
  
  Mullvad just removed port forwarding so OP is looking for something new. I didn't downvote though (jerboa doesn't even show a downvote button).

still using mullvad and haven't had any issues.
- they don't have port-forwarding, how can be that not an issue for torrenting?
  
  port forwarding isn't exactly necessary, but it does help with connectivity.

I'm new to vpns, what's port forwarding?
- Port forwarding allows for a direct connection from one client to another. Effectively when a VPN let's you port forward if you go to the external IP address they assign + the port they assigned they will be able to directly connect to a port that a program/service is listening on.
  Torrent sites are only telling your client who to connect to via the tracker, your client still needs to be able to connect to them. You can still download without this but it is generally slower (may be going through a relay) and you cannot seed torrents except for anyone that can directly connect to you on whatever VPN you are on.
  *Likely some mistakes above. Keep me honest denizens of the web.
  
  Thank you!
- It forwarding opens a port direct to your system from the vpn ip.
  So if your internet address at your router to your ISP is 1.1.1.1(which NATs it to your PC address on your lan) and the vpn exit address is say 10.10.10.10
  Then when you port forward a port, say 443 (you wouldnt) then any request to 10.10.10:443 would then go to 1.1.1.1:443 and then to your pc on your lan.
  In short it allows a direct connection through the vpn
  Edit
  Technically that's slightly incorrect,
  packet goes on 10.10.10.10:443 but it goes to the PC directly through the vpn tunnel. The port it goes through the 1.1.1.1 router to the PC on could be anything, it won't necessarily be 443. It will be whatever the vpn is set to use
  
  Ah, ty!
- I feel like its kinda late to learn now lol. Jokes aside, but its hard to find a good vpn with port forwarding nowdays, I dont know is there any at all. Im not expert, but forwarding will help a lot with seeding and thats the point of torrenting
  Edit: you can still use torrents without port forwarding, it wont mess up your download speed
  
  That... did not answer my question at all.

I started with Cyberghost because they were cheap and had no issues. ProtonVPN my go to now though.

Why is everyone anti NordVPN again?
- They had a data breach because they weren't careful and they're a bunch of liars that say the government hasn't sent data requests but they have.
  I'm a protonvpn unlimited subscriber and I love it because the company has lawyers to fight tooth and nail against legal requests I can't say the same for Nord. The only controversy Proton has had is with Protonmail when an environmental activist used it and proton gave their IP address. There was lots of backlash from this but if you use the internet without a VPN (the activist did not use a VPN), then you should be expecting your IP address to be public, that's how the internet is able to work.
  https://thevpn.guru/nordvpn-legal-data-request/https://www.pcmag.com/news/nordvpn-actually-we-do-comply-with-law-enforcement-data-requests https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/21/nordvpn-confirms-it-was-hacked/
  
  Does protonvpn have an option to auto-connect to vpn on wifi networks (with white listing)?
  Apart form my transmission-openvpn container, my main use of the vpn is to keep my traffic private from my personal devices (iphone, ipad, mac) on most wifi networks. It just auto connects and I never have to remember to do it. But home/trusted wifi is white listed and won’t vpn, again automagically.
- Honesty the reason I never considered them is because they advertised so hard on YouTube and Podcasts that they annoyed me so I never considered them.
  Jesus, felt like there was a time when halfway through any YouTube video it became “and I learned about this browsing the internet safely with Nord VPN…”
  
  I use NordVPN to play some Raid Shadow Legends while I cook up a delicious meal from HelloFresh.
- Because they're also a big corp, pop one.
  
  Weeellll that and the data breaches, of course.
- They don't offer port forwarding so it's kinda pointless to use for torrenting.
  
  Not if you use it with a transmission-openvpn container…
- At least in the context of the question:
  they don't have port forwarding. 2) their speeds for torrenting are crap.
- They are a great VPN. People hated them because it's a fad to hate on the status quo, as well as their heavy and annoying advertising campaign.
  
  I have had them. At least for torrenting they are crap. No port-forwarding and crappy speeds. I'm not using them now, and I'm very happy.
  Also to watch content from other regions from streaming services. All their servers were banned..

For what it’s worth, I’ve been using the free tier of hide.me coming from 2 years of surfshark. The speeds aren’t great. But it’s $0 and it works 🤷‍♂️

Got a lifetime subscription for FastestVPN some years ago. Its slow, but it works and is unlimited so 🙆‍♂️
- Yeah... I'm not sure how much I would trust that.
  
  Its not for privacy, but for deniability. I wouldn't "trust" any traditional VPN.

I'm still using Mullvad and QBittorrent and I torrent my bloody black guts out with no noticed degradation in speeds since their announcement that they were no longer supporting port forwarding. It's anecdotal, I know, but so far I haven't noticed any problems.

I torrent all my Linux distros with Mullvad. No problems here.
- do you understand what port forwarding is for?
  edit: basically, one of two ends of a connection has to have port forwarding, or else the connection can't happen at all.
  
  Finally it gets explained! On Reddit all I ever saw was "if you don't know what port-forwarding is, you don't need to know since you wouldn't use it"
- Same, but for me it's libreoffice updates and protonvpn. We're a couple of badasses.
- You absolute maniac.

Try cryptostorm.is.
- I personally wouldn't try anything with "crypto" in the name these days.

I'm still able to seed using Mullvad ¯(ツ)_/¯

114 comments