Transmission

Transmission is a lean BitTorrent client that does its job quietly: add torrents and magnet links, cap bandwidth, set priorities — in a tidy, native interface that barely touches your resources.

No ads, no toolbars, no bundled extras, unlike some other clients. If you like, control Transmission remotely through a web interface or run it as a background daemon.

The app is open source and has been free for many years — one of the constants on the Mac.

Why no subscription? A download tool does one clearly defined job. You don’t pay monthly for that.