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Torrenting on a VPS: what actually happens

A customer asked on Reddit: "I just got a small VPS. Can I download torrents for my Jellyfin server, or will I get suspended? I won't seed, only download." Here is the longer version of our answer.

"I won't seed" does not work

Downloading alone is not what triggers copyright notices. Uploading is.

The catch: BitTorrent is tit-for-tat. You upload to the swarm while you download, that is how the protocol works. Throttle your upload to almost zero and other peers choke you or ban you as a leech. There is no real download-only mode.

We forward the notice to you, and you get a chance to sort it out. It becomes a problem if you ignore the notices, if the same IP keeps getting them, or if the volume starts to threaten our upstream. Repeated notices for the same IP lead to suspension. Keep it sane and you are fine.

A datacenter IP is not a home IP

This is the part most people miss.

  • Torrent traffic from a home connection is mostly treated as personal use and largely ignored.
  • Traffic from a datacenter IP looks like a commercial operation.
  • Datacenter IP ranges are actively monitored by rights holders, and a static IP is trivial to track.

So the same download that nobody notices at home can be treated as commercial infringement on a server. We wrote more about it in our knowledge base: Torrents on VMs.

We do not advocate torrenting anything other than Linux ISOs. But we are not the moral police either. We just want you to know what you are walking into.

Pick the right location

Our two locations are built for different jobs.

  • Lisbon has many times more uplink capacity. It is built for sustained traffic, so a box that moves files all day fits there.
  • Prague is tuned for latency: a snappy website, a low ping to a game server. It is not built for sustained file traffic, and its traffic limits trigger much sooner.

If you torrent at all, even lightly, put that box in Lisbon. Keep Prague for latency-sensitive work.

Bonus for media servers: Lisbon also has S3-compatible storage at 3.99 EUR per TB, for when your library outgrows the local disk.

Moving to another location

We can migrate a VM by hand (snapshot, copy the disk, restore), but it involves our support team, so it is a paid service. For a fresh server it is overkill.

The faster way: describe your current setup to ChatGPT or Claude, ask for a cloud-init recipe, and paste it into "Recipes" in the client panel. The new box builds itself.

Billing is hourly. When you delete the old VM, its billing stops at once, and you pay only for the hours it ran. Order the new one, delete the old one, and for your bill it is as if you had one VM the whole time.

The customer who asked did exactly that, and was up and running in Lisbon the same day.

Ask the provider

If you are not sure whether something is allowed, ask before you start. A provider that owns its infrastructure gives you a straight answer, even on an awkward topic like this one.