Which is faster direct downloading or torrents

There is no definitive answer, as results can vary depending on network load conditions and availability. The primary advantage that torrents have over traditional HTTP / FTP downloads is that they are decentralized and can run in parallel. If a server is being swamped with requests, downloading from it will be very slow. And if the seeder of a torrent has a slow upload speed, downloading will also be slow. If download speed was unlimited, but each uploader of a seed was limited to a certain speed, as were HTTP / FTP servers, the torrent would be faster, since you can download from more than one person, at a rate faster than single person can upload.

Real-world though, there are many situations where one method would be better than another. For small downloads, direct HTTP / FTP would be faster. What sense would it make to download a 10 KB torrent file, open up your client, connect to the tracker, retrieve a list of peers, and then start downloading, for a 40 KB file? Not much. Nor would it make sense to download a large file through a web browser, unless you have a download manager controlling downloads. Otherwise, if your browser crashed, all your download time would be wasted.