This is indisputable: We can find any digital products online and download them right away. Thanks to the torrent sites, P2P sharing has become so popular that movies, TV shows, documentaries, e-books are just a few clicks away. Yet, there is a catch for that.
By using your own IP address to download a torrent file, you simply sacrifice your online identity. If it is illegal to download torrent files in your country, you can easily be tracked and fined. Simple as that.
However, there is a way to change your IP address and make your online activities untraceable: VPN services!
In this article, we will be covering up top 3 VPN providers and helping you have a safe torrent download experience. Stay tuned!
Why you need a VPN for torrenting
Any online activity is bound to an IP address assigned to you by your ISP (Internet Service Provider). In other words, you are browsing the online world with their binoculars. They can simply throttle you, decide what you can and cannot see with some measurements. In that sense, anything you are doing online can be traced by your ISP.

Taking the image as an example, you can see who downloaded the file earlier and who is sharing it at the moment. All of those IP addresses are exposed!
You may take some precautions by making a few changes to the torrent software and prevent the third person to see your IP address, yet, your provider will be still watching you.
The solution is simple: by using a VPN, we have the opportunity to create an encrypted tunnel and let our activities flow through that. This both help us have a new IP address and prevent the ISP from snooping our activities.
How to choose the right VPN for torrenting
Can you take your brand new Bently to the farm and plow the field? Given this example, you also cannot use any VPN service for torrenting. There are some crucial criteria when picking a good one. And we are here to lead you to the best options. With that said, we have listed some must have VPN features for torrenting. These features will both increase your privacy and get you to have a smooth torrenting experience.
Privacy
Privacy is the main feature we seek for downloading copyrighted stuff and it can be achieved by several key factors. These are off-shore provider operations, no-log policy, encryption on 256bit OpenVPN protocol or greater, IP leak protections.
Stability
For sure, having a great deal of privacy can appeal promising. However, it has to be backed up by well-optimized software as well as stable servers. When downloading a big torrent file, constant stability will help us finish the progress without any kind of interruptions and IP leak issues.
Kill Switch
Things may not run as expected! We may have an internet connection or VPN server problems. Therefore, we need the “Kill Switch” feature -to shut down all internet activities when dropped out of VPN connection.
P2P optimized servers
Nobody likes to wait! If your download queue has so many lined up torrent files, it would be wise to prefer P2P optimized server for faster torrent download experience. Moreover, faster speed experience can add more entertainment to your watching experience when using Popcorn time (another P2P video streaming platform).
Bearing all of these features in mind, we have picked 3 best VPN service provider for you.
Top 3 VPN services for torrenting
NordVPN is a Panama Based VPN service provider excelled in online privacy. The company is safe from criticals jurisdictions like 5 eyes (USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK) and has a strict “no-log policy”. It is not enough! We have seen so many claims from providers (PureVPN, IPVanish) which ended up giving away personal information to the authorities.
NordVPN is not one of them.
Besides Panama Jurisdiction and no-log policy, NordVPN also offers double hop feature with dedicated servers -meaning that the data will be encrypted twice to give us greater privacy.

While we can enjoy the extreme encryption, we have to, somehow, sacrifice from the speed performance. Our speed test with NordVPN was fairly well but not fast enough. On one hand, we had no stability problem while downloading the torrent file. It was consistent and the speed was moving up. On the other hand, we were just able to get around 900KB/Sec at most.
There might be a scenario when your connection becomes vulnerable: you may lose VPN connection! No server is perfect and this is very possible. NordVPN’s “kill switch” feature will cease all internet activities in case you drop out of VPN connection.
Moving forward to P2P optimized servers…
NordVPN does have P2P servers dedicated to torrenting. These servers are supposed to have greater download/ upload speed but according to our experience, servers are usually crowded and you cannot get upmost performance if your download speed is greater than 20 Mbit.
Furthermore, NordVPN’s Popcorn Time performance is relatively better than torrent performance. You will be able to watch TV shows or movies at Full HD quality without any speed or stability issues.
ExpressVPN is one another off-shore based VPN provider operating in British Virgin Island. Its no-log policy covers both your activities and IP addresses. That is a good bonus. Additionally, the VPN software offers up to 1024 bit military grade encryption under different protocols with DNS leak protection.
There is a reason why I picked ExpressVPN as one of the most stable VPN services in the market!
Before starting VPNxD, I was playing MMORPG games. In order to bypass some server restrictions, I had to change my IP address to another country. I tried so many VPN service but ExpressVPN was the only one giving me the best uptime overall. I was able to play the game (Knight Online) with no lag or connection issues for more than 3 days (with automation tools).
As for the torrenting, ExpressVPN will give you the utmost stable performance in the market. Yet, nothing is perfect. In case, you lose internet connection or drop out of VPN, ExpressVPN will try to reconnect automatically. During the problematic period, “Kill Switch” feature will kick in and make sure there is no online activity before establishing the secure connection.

To some extent, privacy is great. However, you might not be pleased with the ExpressVPN speed performance. When we were downloading a torrent file, it reached up to 780KB/Sec. In other words, downloading a 500MB torrent file will take around 10 minutes. If you have a fiber connection greater than 10 MBit, you have to be patient with ExpressVPN.
USA based VPN provider SaferVPN updated its policy in August and extended their no-log policy from online activities to IP addresses and DNS queries. Currently, the service offers 256-bit encryption (AES) along with DNS leak protection.
According to our 1-month experience with SaferVPN, it ranked the simplest VPN in the market. The service can be used in multiple devices simultaneously and it has super stable servers. Still, in case of a connection error, SaferVPN kill switch feature is always there to shut the data transfer down and make sure there is no leak.

Last but not least, SaferVPN is the fastest VPN provider in the market according to our speed test. Not only for download/upload purposes, but also for torrenting. It will help you get the best out of your internet connection. By 2.5 MB/Sec, we download the 990MB file under 10 minutes.
It is out the of question that you will enjoy the extreme speed performance with SaferVPN but you have to be careful!
Torrenting is only allowed with few locations. If you are not certain about the server purposes, make sure to consult their customer support.
Summing up!
Because all of your online activities are bound to your IP address, you should change it while downloading a copyrighted material as it is strictly prohibited in some countries. If not, you may get fined. Therefore, changing the IP address with a VPN service and get the data pass in an encrypted tunnel is necessary.
Second of all, there are hundreds of VPN providers in the market and simply, it is hard to pick a good one for torrenting. Under the lights of our years of VPN experience, we created a quick follow up features: privacy > stability > kill switch feature > P2P optimized servers.
If you like to have extreme privacy, you may want to go after off-shore services like NordVPN or ExpressVPN with 256bit encryption and above. But you have to trade off your speed for the sake of privacy!
On the other hand, you can go after SaferVPN (USA jurisdiction). With its less populated servers, you can enjoy the extreme download speed.
Do you use any other VPN provider for torrenting? Share your experience below.

I’m a part-time traveler on a mission: to explore the world and uncover the intricate demands of VPN usage. Fueled by curiosity, I meticulously navigate the realms of privacy, streaming, and unblocking needs in every destination I visit. With a keen eye, I analyze the local and global VPN demands of each country, translating my findings into informative articles about VPN-related topics.