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Months ago, the original creators of Limewire, a popular bit torrent downloader, left and formed Frostwire. So, I decided to run a test to see which one is far more superior to the other. The tests in this little experiment consists of loadtime, looks, search results, download speed and other extra features.. But, enough talking. Let’s run the tests.
Loadtime
Let’s start off with something simple. In the first test, I tested to see how long each program takes to load. Frostwire started off strong with a load time of 5 seconds. So what about Limewire? Limewire took an extra second to load, meaning that Frostwire was slightly faster than Limewire.
Looks

Frostwire looks
It’s no beauty contest, they’re both the same. None of them look that different from the other. They both have the same tabs (well, Limewire has more tabs than Frostwire), and has that same basic structure. The only difference between the two is the color scheme. Frostwire’s color scheme uses blue and white, while Limewire uses green and white. Really, there’s no clear cut competition in terms of looks.

Limewire looks
Search Results
One of our test was the search engine test. One method I did to see which one was better was test their search results. Since Limewire and Frostwire all contain pirated stuff, we instead used “kittens” for our search. When I typed “kittens” for an image search for Frostwire (btw, I was looking for kittens the animal, and people had all of these crazy “kitten” images), it showed the search result a lot faster than Limewire. Although Limewire’s search speed was slower than Frostwire, it had a lot more search results than Frostwire. By searching “kittens”, it showed 44 search results for “kittens”, while Frostwire showed 26. In the end, despite Limewire’s turtle search results, it clearly beats Frostwire in terms of the number of search results.
Download Speed
My last test was the download speed test. I tested the download speed of both contenders by downloading an episode of my favorite web series “Arby n Chief”. To keep it fair, I downloaded the same video for both Frostwire and Limewire. When I clicked the download link for both bit torrent downloaders, Frostwire savagely beat Limewire’s download time by 25 seconds (Frostwire downloaded the file in 15 seconds flat!)! Words could not describe how shocked I was when this outcome resulted. Clearly Frostwire had a faster download time than Limewire.
Extra Features

Frostwire chat
The only extra feature Frostwire has that Limewire doesn’t is the community chat feature (e.g. chatroom). Everything else is identical.
So who won?
Although it wasn’t a clear cut competition, Frostwire is probably the better bit torrent downloader compared to Limewire. Despite the fact that Frostwire does not have a larger number of search results and looks almost identical to Limewire, its download speed, chat room feature and load time is the number reason why you should go with this bit-torrent downloader.
Syahid A.
June 22nd, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Looks like a little similar to Limewire but I can’t get it working with my Windows. Will try it again later though.
Miss Positive
June 30th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Oooh, there’s Froswire now, huh? I’ve been using Limewire but sometimes the connection is mysteriously slow! I’ll just try FrostWire and see how it is.
portland search marketing
July 1st, 2008 at 7:46 am
I really liked Limewire although it’s a bit overdone now.
Best of Tech Blogs: June 2008
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:47 pm
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moin
July 10th, 2008 at 7:23 am
yeah porland they overdone limewire and it more look like bloatware now
Peter
August 21st, 2008 at 6:19 am
The limewire devs are opening up to the feds, which could potentially mean privacy issues, so frostwire is a good idea.
Larry
October 4th, 2008 at 12:27 am
I could only get one bar connection in limewire. tried frostwire and its all bars green! plus it never asks you to upgrade to pro. im a frostwire convert.
Motiur
October 7th, 2008 at 5:21 am
You should have tried several results when checking for search results. Sometimes the servers are a bit more busy then other times.
You should have tried these tests several times.
jeremy ueto
October 15th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
im using frostwire its faster after all
Drew Peacock
October 25th, 2008 at 4:48 am
Personally I like limewire. I’ve used it for several years also. I even have pro, but lately it doesn’t seem to connecting. No matter what i do, so i’ve switched to Frostwire. It works just about the same as limewire except this big difference. IT ACTUALLY CONNECTS!
althouhg i’ve noticed this slwo motion movement when i minimize or maximize my windows ever since i downloaded frostwire. think there’s anything wrong with that?
Greg
October 30th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
I started off using limewire a couple of years ago and it worked fine, until a couple of weeks ago when i stopped getting a connection. I tried uninstalling it and then reinstalling but still no change. I have since installed frostwire but still get the same problem. I have checked my firewall status and made sure that the programs had full connections. Does anyone know what is wrong?
Jamie Nikolas
October 31st, 2008 at 8:09 am
After reading this article… i decided to try it out. Downloading it now.
duh
December 12th, 2008 at 3:36 am
comeon this is like comparing firefox to iceweasle. they have the same codebase. they are basically the same program, frostwire is just a fork of limewire pro for free.
on a side note
Frostwire, similar to LimeWire Pro, connects to 5 ultrapeers. The Non-pro version of LimeWire only connects to 3. This means that both Limewire Pro and Frostwire have potentially faster download speeds and broader search results.
Tejasback
December 29th, 2008 at 7:38 am
well i’ve used both and I think I’d side with Frostwire just b/c even though they’re similar, Frostwire gives more free services than basic limewire plus a lot less garbage results like limewire.
Rian Xavier
January 3rd, 2009 at 9:51 am
I’m using frostwire. It’s faster than limewire.
Jon
February 4th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
I’m sure it doesn’t need to be said but I’ll say it. Limewire and Frostwire are both P2P apps, not bit-torrent related in any way shape or form. Don’t give BT a bad name by associating it with these apps.
Rad
February 8th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
I’m having a bit of trouble with frostwire atm. Nothing seems to want to transfer over to windows.
Ken
February 16th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
I’m having the same problem. I just downloaded FW on the advice of my son(my ex-wife, who co-owns a DJ service, uses LW Pro). Of five tries, only two made it. All the rest said the format wasn’t supported by Media Player. I guess I’ll just breakdown and buy Pro.
Ashlie
March 11th, 2009 at 4:56 am
i have used limewire for a while now and i think it is soooo slow n mow it wont connect!! So now i’m going to try frostwire. hope it’s amazing but i’m sure it will be.
Ashurbanipal
March 21st, 2009 at 3:30 pm
I will tell you firsthand after being a limewire user for 5 years that frostwire is off the chain. just downloaded it yesterday. It’s faster and has less extra crap on it.
shantell
March 23rd, 2009 at 7:19 am
I had used limewire, but deleted it because it gave my windows a virus. I’m worried that if I download frostwire, I’ll have the same problem since they seem the same.
Horizon
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:38 pm
I’ve used Limewire for a while now but it seems to be more and more rubbish, mosts downloads don’t work properly. Guess I’ll take a look at Frostwire. Thanks for the article!
mickala
March 27th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
limewire apparently has more spyware and gives you a better chance of getting caught, but there’s loads of stuff said about frostwire too! i dont know which one to pick. im sick of all the junk that limewire uploads but pretty much the same thing happens with frostwire!! which one to choose!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
thanks!
p.s. limewire or frostwire haha.
Rosalie
April 1st, 2009 at 9:12 am
hm, not gonna I had limewire for only a little while and I recived four trojans with it. I had to quarentine one of them cuz it was too difficult to get rid of. Then I had to set back my computer so it didn’t remember limewire and I lost all my stuff. Plus some of that stuff I downloaded wasn’t exactly what it said it was. Blah.
So while I miss limewire like hell it lost a bit of my loyalty.
Still I have high hopes for frostwire. haha
^-^
jimmy
April 9th, 2009 at 8:35 am
when i compared the two the quality on some were much better on frost wire on limewire it some time skipped and through the songs with stops and distorted sounds and frost wire never did that and the blue helps u see what your downloding its much more vibernt
s.s
May 4th, 2009 at 9:18 am
Frostwire is good, better than Limewire.
Justin
May 10th, 2009 at 8:55 am
My bestfriend told me about limewire, and I started using it and Loved it. I used it for about 3years I would say and then about 2months ago my pc crashed! So I had it checked out by a friends who is like a pc god and he said that limewire was the villian!:( he said he could only save a few songs I had downloaded cause the majority of them were infected with viruses. So he had to reformat my hard drive and I was told by him to NEVER use limewire! So now a coworker of mine says use Frostwire….been reading about it and it seems like limewire all over again so I will just have to buy my songs from now on.:(
Tammy
May 20th, 2009 at 1:18 am
I got hit with a vicious virus thru limewire.$280.00 later I had my computer back working.PC doctor said limewire was the culprit.Now I’m scared to try any of those sites.Guess Ill just buy my songs too.
RandomSquires
May 25th, 2009 at 1:38 am
I’m sorry, but Jon is wrong.
Frostwire has (limited) BitTorrent capabilities.
Lophie
June 26th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
For god sake just use Frostwire and Limewire on LINUX. no more viruses and trojans and your PC’s will never even lag. …^_^ Peace
Roy
July 22nd, 2009 at 1:07 am
Used Limewire for the longest time and it was fine, although the downloads were a trifle slow, even though the connection status was “Turbo charged”.
Things changed when I installed Bonjour (from Apple), changed my mind, uninstalled it and found, to my horror, that Limewire went with it! When I reinstalled Limewire, the blessed thing refused to connect. It just hung at “Starting connection” and never actually connected. All attempts at troubleshooting failed.
It was on one of the hotfix sites that came across Frostwire. It installed, connected and ran beautifully! Even the download speeds are faster! I would recommend this, Frostwire that is, to everyone.
Thomas Wilson
October 12th, 2009 at 4:53 am
Frostwire is definately faster. Also, because Limewire is opening up to the feds, one would be well-advised to stay away.
Also, if you are concerned with viruses, get a complete security solution like norton 360 premier 3.0. It’s money well spent–you get what you pay for…and not worrying about your file safety is priceless.