Cabos, Acqlite and Acquisition

The earliest mainstay programs that could be considered clones of LimeWire were Cabos, Acqlite and Acquisition. However, whilst these programs used the internal engine of LimeWire with some modifications, their interfaces were considerably different and quite simplistic in comparison. All of these 3 program's interfaces are somewhat similar. Acqlite was designed to be a cross between Cabos and Acquisition.

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Interfaces for each of Acqlite and Cabos, both very similar. Acqlite can keep history of previous sessions searches & perhaps a fraction faster to connect compared to Cabos.

Acquisition (Mac OSX only) is now no longer developed and due to the developer's aggressive commercial approach tried to make sure these versions would no longer run on the network (and people's paid for lifetime membership of Acquisition turned into dust as the developer ran off happily with their money and then developed a torrent shareware equivalent called xtorrent to continue to rip people off with a pathetic torrent program that is not even on the allowed list of torrent programs at private torrent sites. I have tried xtorrent and it is pathetic compared to the true well known standard torrent programs. He provided only half the Acquisition program in the last update then disabled the ability to download the other half despite people had paid for it.) Some Acquisition programs can occasionally be seen online however. Recommended replacement for Acquisition would be Acqlite which is very similar but totally free and usually connects easily. A connection fix installer is available if problems connecting.

Cabos (Windows & Mac) & Acqlite (MacOSX only) can be found here for Windows, or here for MacOSX Cabos & Acqlite or Acqlite here for the sourceforge link, to save you searching for them. Cabos sourceforge download page is Cabos via sourceforge. Another alternative is GoogleDrive. Note: Cabos 0.8 for MacOSX will only run on OSX 10.5 Leopard or earlier and will not run on 64-bit OSX (Cabos 0.7 will run on 10.6 but only 32-bit). Use Acqlite instead, it's arguably a better program in any case. However Acqlite requires specifically Java 1.6 (also known as Java 6) to run.


Note to MacOS users: MacOS issues up to Big Sur 11 for both downloading and opening apps: Due to MacOS's policies on unsigned apps (unidentified developers) and Gatekeeper, you will need to perform a few tricks to both download, install and then open any of these older legacy apps that are all unsigned apps. I've converted several webpages (including Apple Support) to PDF's to help explain how to by-pass MacOS restrictions for unknown devs (unsigned code) and being able to download from a non-mac website, see MacOS security - Using legacy apps on Mac OS.


All other Limewire clones

All the other clone versions of LimeWire I am aware of look and behave almost identically to LimeWire version 4 or earlier (with exception of FrostWire 4, I estimate their technology is no more advanced than LimeWire 4.10.) These LW clones were based off the LW4 or earlier source code (some started during LW3 or earlier.) Of course many people would remember FrostWire as being very similar to LimeWire v.4.

Sorry no LW clones exist for Linux with exception of FrostWire.

These are the only other LW clone versions I have tried or am aware of:
360Share, Addax, Bearshare Turbo, BitRope P2P, CitrixWire, DexterWire, Emerald P2P UltraPeer, GnutellaWire, KoolWire, LemonWire, LimeRunner, LimeShare Pro, LimeWire MP3, LimeWire Music, LimeWire Turbo, LimeZilla, LuckyWire, MP3 Rocket, MP3 Torpedo, MP3Suite, MP3treat, Sharest, ShareWire, ShareZilla, TurboWire, WinMX Music, WireStack. These are all look-alikes of LimeWire 4 with exception of LuckyWire.

The only clone program of the LimeWire 5 version I am aware of is LuckyWire. (Ignoring LPE & WireShare from this.)

My impression is all the LimeWire 4 style clones use older gnutella technology with exception of FrostWire. The only LW 4 clone to have DHT (or even TLS) capabilities AFAIK is FrostWire version 4. DHT was first added to the LimeWire 4.14 version & none of the other LW4 style clones reciprocated (I suspect TLS was added in LW4.12.) The only other clones that seem to have DHT capabilities are Cabos & Acqlite. LuckyWire also.

(identified and tested LW-clones with their icons and names, click to see larger view, 125 KB JPeg)

If you are using or wish to use one of the LimeWire-4 style Clone programs, I highly recommend Port Forwarding so you are not firewalled. The LW-4 style Clones may have UPnP support but it is obviously a very early basic UPnP & in most cases does not work!!! Over 90% (probably 95%) of LW-4 style Clones I see are firewalled, and those that are not firewalled have port forwarded and often connect as ultrapeers (their connection port in most cases is always the same.)

If you know of any other programs based off LimeWire, please let us know.

The purpose of this forum is a general help to keep the Gnutella network running happily. And this includes all the LW clone versions. Some such programs have their own forums, some did but have since closed, and some never had any support.


Upon testing, a few of the LW clones attempt to send messages to a site of address 66.28.49.83 which Malwarebytes blocks and warns me is a malicious website. Spybot-Search&Destroy removed 3 or 4 items and almost 100 entries for the spyware added by the 3rd party installers (that I had not already removed.)



If you are considering trying any of the LW4 style clone versions, my first advice would be to be careful of the installation options. My advice is to choose Custom install and disable the installation of the toolbars and other junkware. Lots of software companies are now into getting pocket money for including 3rd party software in their installers, which only have the effect of slowing your computer and network down. My sister's computer was the best example, with about 15 toolbars, a dozen search engines, several browser plug-ins, some security softwares that did not work well, all resulting in her computer running as slow as a computer made in the 1980's. (10 minutes waiting for a web page to load whilst using high speed broadband, and 15 minutes for the computer to boot up fully.) Once a specialist cleaned her computer of the junk, it ran as fast as though it were new. And all this hassle and particular slow motion running due to 3rd party installations.

I set the install options to custom for all the above programs and unchecked all options for 3rd party software. A few of them installed browser plug-ins anyway despite this. I knew because I was watching various parts of the computer during installation and kept deleting/uninstalling these plug-ins. (And LimeZilla will not even run unless you install the 3rd party stuff & checks at start-up to be sure you have not removed it.)

That decision is totally up to you during installation however and you may like such toolbars. My notification is purely for your information to consider.



I have long suspected the updates to some of these programs are not the program itself being updated but the installers incorporating the latest 3rd party sponsors. Why do they yet still lack support for DHT, TLS, GUESS CAPABLE, hostiles file support or countless other advances that were introduced into the original LimeWire versions 4.12, 4.14 and 4.18? I think a couple might have had UHC support at one point in time but seriously, why are they updating when nothing has been done to update their gnutella technology? What are they updating exactly?? Particularly when their GWebCache support file is totally outdated with GWC's that haven't been seen since 2010 or earlier (even that shows probably nothing within the program is being updated except perhaps the version number.) The LW 4 style clones technology appears to be locked into the 2003 to 2005 period. That's a long time ago!
- Comments updated May 2020