Deluge uses a front and back end architecture where libtorrent, a software library written in C++ which provides the application's networking logic, is connected to one of various front ends including a text console, the web interface and a graphical desktop interface using GTK through the project's own Python bindings.

Starting with version 1.0, Deluge separated its core from its interface, running it instead in a daemon (server/service), allowing users to remotely manage the application over the web.

[6] Deluge was started by two members of ubuntuforums.org, Zach Tibbitts and Alon Zakai, who previously hosted and maintained the project at Google Code, but who subsequently moved it to its own website.

In its first stages, Deluge was originally titled gTorrent, to reflect that it was targeted for the GNOME desktop environment.

When the first version was released on September 25, 2006, it was renamed to Deluge due to an existing project named gtorrent on SourceForge, in addition to the fact that it was finally coded to work not only on GNOME but on any platform which could support GTK.