The BitTorrent client, the brand rather than the protocol, documents its proxy in one help-centre article. It gives the path, Options > Preferences > Connection, the four Proxy Server Type values, SOCKS4, SOCKS5, HTTP Connect and HTTP, and two claims: "Peer communication proxying is not supported with standard HTTP proxies, and UDP proxying is only supported with SOCKS5." The article is word for word the same as µTorrent's, which is no surprise: same company, same engine.
Authentication fields and per-traffic toggles are not documented anywhere we could find. Neither is what the client does with UDP when the SOCKS5 server, like ours, does not relay it. We could not run the Windows client in our lab. So this page is a test sheet: four short runs that turn the two claims, and the open question, into counts you can read off your own machine.
Why the test matters on a proxy like ours
Treat our SOCKS5 as TCP only. UDP relay is not something we advertise, so DHT, UDP trackers and uTP will not run through it, whatever the client supports. An HTTP or HTTP Connect proxy carries no UDP in any client. What the client does with that UDP decides whether your own IP reaches the swarm, because anything it sends outside the proxy leaves from your address. A proxy also adds no encryption.
The meter is the other reason. Residential traffic, and traffic past a shared IP's included gigabyte, is billed per GB, and a seeded torrent pushes its payload through twice; the terms define what is counted. A dedicated IP has no bandwidth cap.
And the scope: lawful content only. Using our proxies for unauthorised sharing is not allowed by the allowed-use policy. If the question is copyright enforcement rather than routing, the qBittorrent project's wiki gives the honest answer for every client: consider a VPN.
Prepare
- From your order, note the host, the HTTP port and the SOCKS5 port, and resolve the host to an IP with
Resolve-DnsName HOSTin PowerShell. - Note the exit IP through the proxy with the curl line from our proxy checker.
- Pick a lawful torrent with a busy swarm, such as a current Linux installer image.
- Find the client's process ID in Task Manager's Details tab.
The two commands every run uses:
$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
For UDP, start Wireshark with the filter udp.port == LISTEN_PORT && !(ip.addr == PROXY_IP) and count the packets from your machine to public addresses over one minute.
The test sheet
Run each configuration for two minutes after the torrent starts, restarting the client between runs.
| Run | Proxy Server Type | Port | Claim being tested | Expected if the docs hold |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | none | Baseline | Many peer addresses; UDP on the listening port | |
| 2 | HTTP | HTTP port | Standard HTTP does not carry peers | Peer addresses still listed by the TCP command |
| 3 | HTTP Connect | HTTP port | CONNECT carries peers | Only the proxy's address in the TCP command, if the proxy allows CONNECT to peer ports |
| 4 | SOCKS5 | SOCKS5 port | SOCKS5 carries peers; UDP only via SOCKS5 | Only the proxy's address over TCP; UDP relayed where the proxy allows it, and on ours, the open question |
Record four numbers per run: TCP connections to the proxy, TCP connections elsewhere, UDP packets leaving outside the proxy, and the bytes the client reports downloading. Run 4 is the one that answers the open question. Zero UDP packets to public addresses means the client dropped DHT and uTP when the relay was refused. A steady stream means it sent them direct, and you should switch DHT and uTP off in the client before you rely on the proxy.
How to read a test like this, and why a single run is an anecdote, is covered in how to test a proxy provider.
What the sheet costs to run
Two minutes per run at a modest speed is small, but the residential meter counts it. A 1 GB residential order is $5.50, from a $10 minimum top-up, and new accounts get 1 GB of residential traffic free, enough for the test on a speed-capped client. For the long run, seeding a 10 GB release back to a ratio of 1.0 moves 20 GB, $79.00 at checkout, while an ISP IP is $3.20/IP (dedicated) a month with no bandwidth cap. Peer-to-peer traffic for lawful content is fine on residential and on dedicated ISP and datacenter IPs, which carry no traffic meter. The cost calculator shows where the two cross for your volume.
Versions, and what the brand name hides
The last desktop entry in BitTorrent's public release notes is BitTorrent 7.11.0 for Windows, build 46555, dated November 22, 2022. There is also a BitTorrent Web edition and an Android app with more than 50 million downloads, and we found no proxy documentation for either. Because "BitTorrent" is also the protocol's name, search results for it mix the client with the protocol and with every other client; the help-centre article above is the only source for this one. Its near-twin is covered in our µTorrent guide, and the torrent client comparison puts both next to clients that document more.