How to use Proton VPN for BitTorrent
Peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing is only available using one of our paid Proton VPN Plus, Proton Unlimited, or Visionary (legacy users only) plans. If you are on a Free plan and wish to torrent, you need to upgrade to one of these plans.
To do this, log in to your account at account.protonvpn.com, click the Upgrade button at the top right of the screen, and select your preferred plan.
How to torrent with Proton VPN
1. Download, install, and open our app for your device.
Note that while our iOS/iPadOS app does support P2P servers, Apple does not permit P2P apps in the iOS App Store. This means torrenting is not usually possible on iPhones or iPads.
2. Connect to one of our P2P servers. You can torrent while connected to any of our Plus servers, but we recommend connecting to our special P2P servers, as these are optimized for BitTorrent network traffic.
P2P servers (and the countries that support them) are clearly marked with a double-arrow icon.
You can now torrent safely with Proton VPN privacy.
Learn more with our ultimate guide to torrenting
Binding your BitTorrent client to the VPN interface
Some BitTorrent clients (such as qBittorrent and Vuze) allow you to bind the client to the VPN interface. Doing this blocks all traffic to and from the client except over the VPN interface, and is therefore a good security feature.
However, if you bind the client to your physical internet interface (for example your WiFi card), then the torrent traffic will bypass the VPN interface and your IP address for that traffic will be exposed. In this situation, we cannot guarantee that our kill switch will protect you.
In the case of qBittorrent, the default configuration using Any interface can expose your IP address when torrenting.
The solution is to bind the client to to the Proton VPN interface. To do this, open the qBittorrent app and go to Tools → Preferences → Advanced → Network interface. Select proton0 from the dropdown menu, then click OK.
