Gnutella
Ranked 2 of 3 file sharing protocols by recommenders
Early peer-to-peer file-sharing protocol that still runs, praised for its innovation and for scaling to large networks, though critics say its search was slow and scaled poorly.
Early peer-to-peer file-sharing protocol that still runs, praised for its innovation and for scaling to large networks, though critics say its search was slow and scaled poorly.
16 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 7
- approval share
- 56%
Recommended in 2 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 1.2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 2 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Worked well at scale
“It was not perfect, but it worked enough to scale to very large user counts.”
Comment from 20 Oct 2026 in “One Hash Bloom Filters” “Gnutella was great on the gigabit intranet.”
Comment from 11 May 2026 in “Nullsoft, 1997-2004 AOL kills off the last maverick tech company (2004)” Innovative, ahead-of-its-time design
“Gnutella developers created huge innovations and would have continued to do so if not sued out of existence.”
Comment from 26 May 2026 in “Gnutella: A Protocol Outlives the World That Created It” “The network still lives, even today. This is so underrated.”
Comment from 11 May 2026 in “Nullsoft, 1997-2004 AOL kills off the last maverick tech company (2004)”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Slow queries and poor scaling
“it had some pretty major issues with speed of queries and scaling to millions of users”
Comment from 25 May 2026 in “Gnutella: A Protocol Outlives the World That Created It” “The main issue with Gnutella was - IIRC - that it didn't scale.”
Comment from 25 May 2026 in “Gnutella: A Protocol Outlives the World That Created It” “broadcast search approach limited scalability”
Comment from 22 May 2026 in “Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps” Weaker than BitTorrent
“The problem with Gnutella was that it was always slower than the direct competitor”
Comment from 26 May 2026 in “Gnutella: A Protocol Outlives the World That Created It” “it had a lot of downsides as a protocol that BitTorrent improved on”
Comment from 25 May 2026 in “Gnutella: A Protocol Outlives the World That Created It” “the cost/benefit of the Gnutella architecture wasn't there”
Comment from 25 May 2026 in “Gnutella: A Protocol Outlives the World That Created It”
Other file sharing protocols people recommend
The two most recommended other file sharing protocols, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BitTorrent | 50 | 11 | 82% | 12 | — | Approved |
| GnutellaThis page | 9 | 7 | 56% | 2 | — | — |
| Dat | 5 | 2 | 71% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
All 18 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It was not perfect, but it worked enough to scale to very large user counts.”
“Gnutella developers created huge innovations and would have continued to do so if not sued out of existence.”
“The problem with Gnutella was that it was always slower than the direct competitor”
“you never know what you are getting. Look for some Disney movie, get porn.”
“a situation best served by Gnutellla”
“Gnutella's original sin was that it combined distributed search with distributed download.”
“Whereas Gnutella tends to be look for and get one song at a time.”
“The main issue with Gnutella was - IIRC - that it didn't scale.”
“the attached chat rooms were pretty handy”
“it had some pretty major issues with speed of queries and scaling to millions of users”
“the cost/benefit of the Gnutella architecture wasn't there”
“it had a lot of downsides as a protocol that BitTorrent improved on”
“I'm going to use it to not obey”
“I enjoyed the writing style very much”
“broadcast search approach limited scalability”
“Gnutella was great on the gigabit intranet.”
“The network still lives, even today. This is so underrated.”
“Publishing Gnutella while being acquired by a greedy media company was such a baller move.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.