Bypassing RapidShare Download Limits

Since the launch of RapidShare in May 2002, a lot of people have tried to bypass the limits of RapidShare downloads. Some methods were fake, some were kept secret and a couple of them really worked.

Because of the way RapidShare imposes it’s limits on their non-premium users, it is still possible today to bypass the download limit without purchasing a premium RapidShare account. A lot of websites list ways to download without purchasing a premium account, but most of them are outdated or incomplete.

Methods that do not longer work
Skipping the download counter with javascript
GreaseMonkey plugin for FireFox and rapidshare.user.js
These are old ways to bypass the download limit and RapidShare has closed these holes a long time ago.

Analysis of RapidShare limits
To bypass the RapidShare download limits, we first have to analyze those limits :

download delay (you have to wait before your download begins)
download size limit (you can only download a certain amount of Megabytes per hour)
simultaneous download limit (you can only download one file at a time)
Let’s analyze the download delay limit.
For free users RapidShare creates a download ticket when a file is requested and prepares the file for download. Mostly you will have to wait between 2-3 minutes before your download will start. After the waiting period you will enjoy the download at full speed like premium users.

About the download size limit.
Files on RapidShare have a maximum size of 100MB and that’s the download limit for non-premium users. Because most files shared on RapidShare are split up in chunks of 100MB, a free user will be allowed to download only one file per hour.

Analysis of simultaneous download limit.
This one’s pretty straight-forward. A non-premium user can download one file at a time. RapidShare can recognize you by IP address and will not allow more than one download per IP.

Bypassing RapidShare limits by following bending the rules
After our extensive analysis of RapidShare’s limits we can, finally, get to the interesting part : bypassing those limits.

Method 1 : connect to RapidShare via proxy
As we discussed above, RapidShare imposes limits on free users based on their IP address. This means that if we find a way to change (or hide) our IP address, we will be able to enjoy unlimited downloads. All recent (and not so recent) browsers support proxy servers, so this method will work for almost everyone.

One way to hide our IP address is by using a proxy server. Proxy servers are very simple machines that receive data and forward it to the specified destination. This means that when you connect to RapidShare through a proxy server, RapidShare will see the proxy server’s IP, not yours.

First of all we need a list of proxies. You can either select a random one or choose one from the sorted list. A quick search on Google for “transparent proxy” or “anonymous proxy” will yield good results as well. Copy the address and port from the list and paste them into the proxy settings dialog in your favorite browser.

Method 2 : connect to RapidShare via the Tor network
This method is very similar to method 1, except that here we do not have to look for a proxy server. Tor is a piece of software that protects your privacy on the internet by “bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world“. This sounds complicated, but actually Tor is just a way of relaying all your connections through a couple of “proxies”. This again will allow us to hide our IP address from RapidShare and enjoy unlimited downloads.

Information about how to install Tor on your Operating System can be found on their main website.

Method 3 : request a new IP address
Most of us are connected to the Internet via cable or adsl and usually our ISP will assign us a dynamic IP address every time we turn on our computer. ISPs use dynamic IP addresses because not all their customers will be online at once at any given moment. So when you connect to the Internet your ISP will assign you an IP address from the pool of available IP’s, which usually is huge. Now we don’t want to turn off our computer every time after we download a file from RapidShare, so here we will explain how to make your ISP issue a new IP address on your request.

To request a new IP for windows users :

1.Open a command prompt (Click Start -> Run, type `cmd` in the Open box, click OK)
2.Run the following commands at the command prompt, one by one:
ipconfig /flushdns
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew
exit
3.Start another download from RapidShare
Another way to request a new IP address is to restart the Internet Connection from Network Connections in the Control Panel.

If you are using a router to connect to the Internet, this method might not work and you can get a new IP address by turning it off for a minute and then back on. If you are familiar with the internal workings of your specific router you can restart the connection from the router’s interface.

In conclusion …
Currently, these are the only methods that we know of to legally bypass RapidShare’s download limits. If you have suggestions, improvements or comments we would love to hear from you. Just leave a note below.