BitComet's official help page, "BitComet Options", documents its proxy in three lines. Proxy Type defaults to No Proxy. The supported types are "Socks4, Socks4a, Socks5, HTTP1.1". And one option, introduced in version 1.20, works the opposite way to most clients: Don't use proxy for tracker/peer-to-peer connections "specifies if you want to bypass the proxy server for connections to the tracker or for connections to peers." Unticked is what you want. Ticked for peers, it hands the swarm your own address.
Beyond that, the record is thin. Authentication, DHT, UDP trackers and uTP behind a proxy are not documented. The help page puts the setting in a Proxy section of the Options dialog, but does not say which menu opens that dialog. We did not run BitComet in our lab, so the unknowns stay unknown here and the test below is how you resolve them.
What a proxy does and does not do here
A proxy relays your connections from a different address. It does not encrypt them, and any connection BitComet makes around it, a bypassed tracker, a bypassed peer, or UDP the client sends directly, shows your own IP. Treat our SOCKS5 as TCP only: we do not advertise UDP relay, so DHT, UDP trackers and uTP will not run through it even if BitComet tried. HTTP1.1 proxies carry no UDP. On residential, and on a shared IP past its included gigabyte, traffic is billed per GB, and whatever BitComet seeds through proxied peers crosses the meter on the way out as well as in; the terms set out how it is counted. For the copyright-enforcement question, the projects' own documentation points elsewhere; the qBittorrent wiki recommends a VPN. Our proxies are for lawful content, and using them for unauthorised sharing is not allowed under the allowed-use policy.
Set it, and read the bypass option the right way round
- Open the Options dialog and its Proxy section.
- Set Proxy Type to Socks5, with the host and SOCKS5 port from your order. HTTP1.1 with the HTTP port is the alternative.
- If there are credential fields, fill them in. If not, add your public IP to the order's IP allowlist, which needs no credentials in the client.
- Leave Don't use proxy for tracker/peer-to-peer connections unticked for both.
| Bypass setting | Tracker sees | Peers see | Proxy traffic |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither ticked | The proxy | The proxy | Everything proxied |
| Tracker ticked | Your address | The proxy | Almost all of it; announces are small |
| Peer-to-peer ticked | The proxy | Your address | A few kilobytes of announces |
| Both ticked | Your address | Your address | None; the proxy is set but unused |
The third row is the trap worth naming. It costs almost nothing on the meter, which can look like an efficient setup, and it masks nothing: every peer and every swarm monitor sees your own address on the data connections.
Test the unknowns
With the proxy set and a lawful torrent running for two minutes, find BitComet's process ID (Task Manager's Details tab on Windows) and list its connections:
$p = 1234
Get-NetTCPConnection -OwningProcess $p -State Established | Group-Object RemoteAddress | Sort-Object Count -Descending | Select-Object Count, Name
Get-NetUDPEndpoint -OwningProcess $p | Select-Object LocalAddress, LocalPort
On Linux or macOS, ss -Htnp state established | grep "pid=PID," or lsof -nP -i -a -p PID gives the same list.
- TCP: every line should be the proxy's address. Anything else is a connection around it.
- UDP: capture the listening port for a minute in Wireshark (
udp.port == PORT && !(ip.addr == PROXY_IP)). Packets to public addresses answer the DHT question for your version: they are going direct. - Exit address: the curl line on our proxy checker, run through the same proxy, prints the address the swarm should see.
If UDP leaves direct, switch DHT off in BitComet before relying on the proxy, and measure again.
Long-term seeding on a meter
BitComet's selling point is "Long-Term Seeding Technology", which it says "can find more seeds". Seeding is the half of BitTorrent that runs for as long as you let it, and on a per-GB plan that is a running bill. Seeding 20 GB a month through proxied peers is $79.00 on residential at checkout, every month. A datacenter IP is $1.90/IP (dedicated) a month and an ISP IP $3.20/IP (dedicated), neither with a bandwidth cap, though port speed and fair use still apply. Peer-to-peer traffic for lawful content is fine on residential and on dedicated ISP and datacenter IPs, which carry no traffic meter. Shared IPs include 1 GB of traffic each, with more billed per GB; the dedicated vs shared comparison sets the plans side by side, and the cost calculator finds where per-GB and per-IP cross for your volume.
Version 2.22, dated 2026.9.4, is current and runs on Windows, macOS, Linux and Android, per BitComet's site. The torrent client comparison lists BitComet with the clients whose UDP behaviour is undocumented.