Free file sharing software

eMule is a free peer-to-peer file sharing application for Microsoft Windows. Started in May 2002 as an alternative to eDonkey2000, eMule connects to both the eDonkey network and the Kad network. The distinguishing features of eMule are the direct exchange of sources between client nodes, recovery of corrupted downloads, and the use of a credit system to reward frequent uploaders. eMule transmits data in zlib-compressed form to save bandwidth.

The Invisible Internet Project (I2P) is an anonymous network layer (implemented as a mix network) that allows for censorship-resistant, peer-to-peer communication. Anonymous connections are achieved by encrypting the user's traffic (by using end-to-end encryption), and sending it through a volunteer-run network of roughly 55,000 computers distributed around the world. Given the high number of possible paths the traffic can transit, a third party watching a full connection is unlikely. The software that implements this layer is called an "I2P router", and a computer running I2P is called an "I2

qBittorrent is a cross-platform free and open-source BitTorrent client written in native C++. It relies on Boost, OpenSSL, zlib, Qt 6 toolkit and the libtorrent-rasterbar library for the torrent back-end, with an optional search engine written in Python.

LimeWire was a free peer-to-peer file sharing client for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Solaris. Created by Mark Gorton in 2000, it was most prominently a tool used for the download and distribution of pirated materials, particularly pirated music.

Hyphanet (until mid-2023: Freenet) is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant, anonymous communication. It uses a decentralized distributed data store to keep and deliver information, and has a suite of free software for publishing and communicating on the Web without fear of censorship. Both Freenet and some of its associated tools were originally designed by Ian Clarke, who defined Freenet's goal as providing freedom of speech on the Internet with strong anonymity protection.

DC++ is a free and open-source, peer-to-peer file-sharing client that can be used for connecting to the Direct Connect network or to the ADC protocol. It is developed primarily by Jacek Sieka, nicknamed arnetheduck.

Shareaza is a peer-to-peer file sharing client running under Microsoft Windows which supports the Gnutella, Gnutella2 (G2), eDonkey, BitTorrent, FTP, HTTP and HTTPS network protocols and handles magnet links, ed2k links, and the now deprecated gnutella and Piolet links. It is available in 30 languages.

FrostWire is a free and open-source BitTorrent client first released in September 2004, as a fork of LimeWire. It was initially very similar to LimeWire in appearance and functionality, but over time developers added more features, including support for the BitTorrent protocol. In version 5, support for the Gnutella network was dropped entirely, and FrostWire became a BitTorrent-only client.

aMule is a free peer-to-peer file sharing utility that works with the eDonkey network and the Kad network, offering similar features to eMule and adding others such as GeoIP (country flags). On August 18, 2003 it was forked from the xMule source code, which itself is a fork of the lMule project, which was the first attempt to bring the eMule client to Linux. These projects were discontinued and aMule is the resulting project, though aMule has less and less resemblance to the client that sired it.

Syncthing is a peer-to-peer file synchronization utility, designed to sync files between devices on a local network or between remote devices over the Internet. It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, *BSD and illumos. The software is free and open source, and its version 1.0 was released in 2019 after 5 years in beta.

Retroshare is a free and open-source peer-to-peer communication and file sharing app based on a friend-to-friend network built by GNU Privacy Guard (GPG). Optionally peers may exchange certificates and IP addresses to their friends and vice versa.

MLDonkey is an open-source, multi-protocol, peer-to-peer file sharing application that runs as a back-end server application on many platforms. It can be controlled through a user interface provided by one of many separate front-ends, including a Web interface, telnet interface and over a dozen native client programs.

thumb|Christian Grothoff, maintainer of GNUnet, in [[Berlin on August 1, 2013, at the "#youbroketheinternet. We'll make ourselves a GNU one." event]] GNUnet is a software framework for decentralized, peer-to-peer networking and an official GNU package. The framework offers link encryption, peer discovery, resource allocation, communication over many transports (such as TCP, UDP, HTTP, HTTPS, WLAN and Bluetooth) and various basic peer-to-peer algorithms for routing, multicast and network size estimation.

Tribler is an open source decentralized BitTorrent client which allows anonymous peer-to-peer by default. Tribler is based on the BitTorrent protocol and uses an overlay network for content searching. Due to this overlay network, Tribler does not require an external website or indexing service to discover content. The user interface of Tribler is very basic and focused on ease of use instead of diversity of features. Tribler is available for Linux, Windows, and OS X.

StealthNet is an anonymous P2P file sharing software based on the original RShare client, and has been enhanced. It was first named 'RShare CE' (RShare Community Edition). It use the same network and protocols as RShare.

xMule (short for "X11 Mule") is a discontinued free client for the eDonkey peer-to-peer file sharing network intended to bring it to virtually all the major Unix platforms, with a particular emphasis on Linux.

iFolder is an open-source application, developed by Novell, Inc., intended to allow cross-platform file sharing across computer networks.

WASTE is a peer-to-peer and friend-to-friend protocol and software application developed by Justin Frankel at Nullsoft in 2003 that features instant messaging, chat rooms, and file browsing/sharing capabilities. The name WASTE is a reference to Thomas Pynchon's novel The Crying of Lot 49. In the novel, W.A.S.T.E. is (among other things) an underground postal service.

Rclone is an open source, multi threaded, command line computer program to manage or migrate content on cloud and other high latency storage. Its capabilities include sync, transfer, crypt, cache, union, compress and mount. The rclone website lists supported backends including S3 and Google Drive.

Phex is a peer-to-peer file sharing client for the gnutella network, released under the terms of the GNU General Public License, so Phex is free software. Phex is based on Java SE 5.0 or later.

giFT Internet File Transfer (giFT) is a computer software daemon that allows several file sharing protocols to be used with a simple client having a graphical user interface (GUI). The client dynamically loads plugins implementing the protocols, as they are required.

gtk-gnutella is a peer-to-peer file sharing application which runs on the gnutella network. gtk-gnutella uses the GTK+ toolkit for its graphical user interface. Released under the GNU General Public License, gtk-gnutella is free software.