How to Safely Torrent with Mullvad VPN

Setting up a VPN for torrenting involves more than just a standard server connection. If you don’t configure Mullvad properly, you still risk leaking your IP and revealing your P2P activity.

In the steps below, we’ll tell you exactly how to configure Mullvad to maximize the VPN’s speed, security, and privacy.

1Choose a safe torrent client

No operating system comes with a built-in P2P client. You’ll have to install third party software.

We strongly recommend qBittorrent as the best torrent client. It’s open-source, safe, and doesn’t include ads. It also allows network binding, for added security.

Other popular options include Vuze, Deluge, uTorrent, and BitTorrent. Whichever you choose, make sure to download it from its official website

2Download the Mullvad VPN app

Download Mullvad on the device you’ll be torrenting on. If you don’t already have an account, you can subscribe to Mullvad for $5.50 a month. Mullvad doesn’t offer any discounts for longer-term plans.

For greater privacy, we suggest paying via cash or cryptocurrency. This way, it’s not possible to link your Mullvad account back to you.

3Enable all Mullvad security settings

Before connecting to a server, make sure Mullvad is set up with maximum security.

Thankfully, Mullvad doesn’t allow the kill switch to be turned off. A kill switch is the most important security feature for torrenting, but there are still some essential features that are not enabled by default.

To change the VPN’s security settings, open the Mullvad app and click the settings cog icon in the top right.

4Set up port forwarding

Mullvad is one of only a few VPNs that support port forwarding. By setting it up, you can download your torrent files faster and improve your seeding time.

Before starting, you will have to turn off recurring payments if you subscribe to Mullvad via credit card or PayPal.

As a privacy precaution, port forwarding is not allowed on any Mullvad account with an active subscription. You’ll still be able to use the VPN until the end of your billing period. Once that’s up, you’ll have to resubscribe again.

Scroll down to see our step-by-step instructions, or watch the video below to see exactly how we set up port forwarding with Mullvad.

Note: Enabling port forwarding will prevent you from using the SOCKS5 proxy. As Mullvad’s VPN connection is already very secure, we strongly recommend you use port forwarding instead of SOCKS5.

5Bind Mullvad to your torrenting client

For additional security, bind Mullvad to your torrenting client. By enabling this, torrent files will only download when you’re connected to a Mullvad VPN server.

In practice, this works similarly to a kill switch. If the connection to the VPN drops or you accidentally disconnect, your torrent file will stop downloading and your true IP address will remain hidden.

Watch the video below to see how we set this up. We used qbittorrent, but the process is the same for most popular torrenting clients.

6Test your connection for leaks

The final step is to ensure your VPN and torrent client is set up correctly.

To do this, use our torrent IP leak test tool. It’ll check that you’re not accidentally leaking any IP or DNS information through the VPN tunnel.

If the tool doesn’t detect any leaks, you’re ready to download torrent files as you usually do.

Out of all the 56 VPNs we tested, we rank Mullvad as the fourth-best for safe torrenting.

Mullvad uses strong AES-256 or ChaCha20 encryption, it doesn’t collect any user or activity logs, and it downloads torrent files extremely fast.

To compete with the very best torrenting VPNs, Mullvad needs to improve the reliability of its speeds. We also wish it was easier to set up some of the advanced torrenting features, like port forwarding.

Here’s a summary of Mullvad’s strengths and weaknesses at torrenting:

Pros	Cons
P2P traffic supported on all servers Fast torrenting speeds in most locations Strong kill switch and other security features Uses best-in-class protocols and encryption Doesn’t log any activity data Accepts cash payments	Inconsistent speed performance Port forwarding is complicated to set up Port forwarding not allowed on accounts with active subscription SOCKS5 proxy can’t be used with port forwarding

In the section below, we’ll explain in-depth the features that make Mullvad good and bad for P2P file-sharing.

Mullvad is fast enough for torrenting

Most popular torrent sites distribute content with extremely large file sizes, like movies and TV shows. A fast VPN can make the difference between waiting minutes or hours for a file to download.

Speed is the main area where Mullvad excels. When using it, we could download torrent files almost as quickly as with no VPN.

While using its Manchester server, our speed dropped from 10MiB/s to 9.8MiB/s. This is one of the fastest results we’ve ever recorded.

The only issue is that Mullvad’s torrent speeds change depending on the server you use. When connected to its London location, our download bitrate dropped to 2.1MiB/s. This meant our files took almost five times as long to download.

Here are our results when testing Mullvad’s torrenting bitrate when connected to nearby servers:

Mullvad Server	Download Bitrate	Time To Download 50GB Torrent File
No VPN	10MiB/s	1 hour 19 minutes
Manchester Server	9.8MiB/s	1 hour 21 minutes
London Server	2.1MiB/s	6 hours 18 minutes

Because of the variance in performance, we strongly recommend trying multiple Mullvad servers and sticking to the one that gives you the fastest speeds. Otherwise, you might be waiting longer than you need for your files to download.

With that said, Mullvad’s speed performance is very impressive on the vast majority of servers. It’s even faster than most top torrenting VPNs, like ExpressVPN and PIA.

Mullvad is one of the most trustworthy VPNs

Mullvad can be trusted to keep your torrenting activity hidden from your ISP and other third parties.

The one downside is Mullvad’s base in Sweden. Sweden is part of the 14 Eyes intelligence sharing alliance, as well as the EU. As a result, Sweden shares surveillance data with other countries.

However, this isn’t a major concern as Mullvad doesn’t log personally-identifiable data. Mullvad doesn’t have any information to provide if it’s ever requested.

In fact, Mullvad’s privacy protections are so strong that it has not been able to provide any user data when requested by a court of law.

Although not publicly known, a representative from Mullvad told us that “since we do not have any VPN activity logs […] we have no information that could help their investigation.”

Real-world tests like this are the best way to assess a VPN’s trustworthiness. You can be sure that Mullvad will protect your sensitive P2P activity.

Strong encryption and security features

Mullvad includes all the security settings you’d expect from a top torrenting VPN.

It supports the AES-256 and ChaCha20 encryption ciphers, depending on whether you use OpenVPN or WireGuard. The app also includes a system-wide kill switch, IP leak protection, and a malware blocker. We explain the necessity of these in the instructions section of this page.

Mullvad’s server infrastructure and apps have also been audited by a third party. No privacy-compromising information was discovered during the audit. However, the latest of these was in 2021, which is not as recent as we’d like.

To check how well Mullvad encrypts traffic, we tested it ourselves using Wireshark. We inspected packets of data to ensure nothing was viewable in plain text.

Mullvad successfully encrypted our DNS, HTTP, TCP, and UCP requests. All information within the VPN tunnel was obfuscated.

Unlimited torrenting on every server

Mullvad allows you to torrent on all 833 of its servers. All of its servers are optimized for P2P file-sharing and have unlimited bandwidth.

As well, Mullvad supports port forwarding in all 38 countries. Some other VPNs we tested, like PIA, prevent you from port forwarding in certain regions.

Mullvad is also impressively transparent with its server network. For added security, you can view its server list to make sure you’re connected to a server wholly owned by Mullvad.

Port forwarding is difficult to set up

We were disappointed with aspects of Mullvad’s port forwarding feature.

Primarily, it is much more difficult to set up than with some other VPNs. For example, PIA and Proton VPN allow you to configure port forwarding by simply ticking a box in the app’s settings.

With Mullvad, you can’t set it up from within the app and you’ll have to go through a multi-step setup process. You need to do this every time you switch to a different server location, too, which happens often given its poor P2P speeds on certain servers.

Secondly, port forwarding is not allowed on any account with an active subscription. You have to remove your payment information by canceling your subscription.

After contracting Mullvad, we were told this is to protect user privacy. As Mullvad only allows five open ports per account, each port is tied to the account ID. If there’s payment information attached to the account, your torrenting activity could theoretically be linked back to you.

Although we’re glad Mullvad has taken steps to block a potential privacy issue, it only exists because of Mullvad’s five port limitation.

We’d like to see Mullvad, like some other VPNs, allow users to configure an unlimited number of ports. That way, there would be no need for the ports to be linked to the account ID.

Although Mullvad performed well in our torrenting tests, there are still better options available.

Other VPN services, like PIA VPN, allow you to download torrent files faster, log less data, and are easier to use.

Here’s Mullvad’s torrenting performance compared to the best paid and free VPNs for torrenting:

Attribute	Mullvad	PIA	Windscribe Free
Speed & Reliability Rating	9.3	9.6	7.6
Cheapest Monthly Price	$4.85	$2.19	Free
Data Cap	Unlimited	Unlimited	10GB
Port Forwarding	Yes	Yes	No
Torrenting Bitrate	9.8MiB/s	9.6MiB/s	6.3MiB/s
P2P Servers	833	17,087	11
Logging Policy	Anonymous Server Data	No Logs	Anonymous Server Data

Mullvad is certainly a great VPN for torrenting. However, PIA’s no-logs policy and simpler interface make it the better option for most users.

Windscribe is a worthy free alternative, but Mullvad beats it in every metric.

Private Internet Access: The Best Overall VPN for Torrenting

Private Internet Access is an excellent VPN for safe torrenting. It’s fast, its privacy policy is superb, and it’s available for cheap on long-term plans.

PIA VPN is much easier to use than Mullvad. Its port forwarding functionality can be enabled in the app.

In contrast, Mullvad’s port forwarding feature is not available in the app. Moreover, it’s not intuitive and requires multiple setup steps.

PIA allows P2P traffic on all 17,087 of its servers across 84 countries.

On the other hand, Mullvad has just 833 servers in 38 countries.

As such, you’re more likely to find a close-by server with PIA, plus server congestion is less likely. Both these factors mean faster and more reliable torrenting downloads.

However, PIA doesn’t allow you to port forward on any US servers. It’s also more expensive than Mullvad, if you pay month-by-month.

In short, Private Internet Access is our favorite VPN for torrenting, but Mullvad is still a good choice if you’re based in the US or pay monthly.

Windscribe: Free VPN Alternative for Torrenting

Windscribe is a worthy alternative to Mullvad, if you don’t want to pay for a VPN subscription. As you’d expect from a free service, though, it’s worse than Mullvad in every way.

The VPN comes with a 10GB monthly data cap. In our experience, this often wasn’t enough to download a movie in high resolution. It’s only usable for torrenting movies in a lower resolution, individual episodes of TV shows, or music.

The VPN protection will stop as soon as you use up the 10GB allowance, so make sure to activate the kill switch in the app’s settings. Otherwise, your true IP address will leak.

It’s also 36% slower than Mullvad for torrenting. Using it, we recorded an average bitrate of 6.3MiB/s. This result is fine for a free service, but it doesn’t come close to Mullvad or PIA’s speeds.

Overall, there’s no reason to choose Windscribe over Mullvad unless you prioritize value above all else.