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This is a comparison of BitTorrent websites that includes most of the most popular sites. These sites typically contain multiple torrent files and an index of those files.
| Part of a series on |
| File sharing |
|---|
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This is a comparison of BitTorrent websites that includes most of the most popular sites. These sites typically contain multiple torrent files and an index of those files.
The following table compares the features of some of the most popular BitTorrent websites; it is not comprehensive with regard to listing all of the popular BitTorrent trackers, especially private trackers. [1]
| Site | Specialization | Is a tracker | Directory | Public | RSS | One-click download | Sortable | Comments | Multi-tracker index | Ignores DMCA | Tor-friendly | Registration |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1337x [2] | None | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No [3] | No | Yes |
| BTDigg | None | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | ? | ? | Yes | No |
| Demonoid | None | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | Yes | ? |
| etree | Live concerts | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | ? | ? | ? |
| MVGroup | Documentary films and educational media | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | ? |
| Nyaa | East Asian content, especially manga and anime | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| The Pirate Bay | None | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Rutracker.org [4] | None | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| YggTorrent | None | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | Yes | Yes |
| YourBittorrent | None | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No [5] | No | ? |
| Tamil Rockers [6] | None | ? | ? | Yes | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? | Yes | Yes | ? |
| Site | Specialization | Is a tracker | Directory | Public | RSS | One-click download | Sortable | Comments | Multi-tracker index | Ignores DMCA | Tor friendly | Registration |
| Site | Specialization | Was a tracker | Directory | Public | RSS | One-click download | Sortable | Comments | Multi-tracker index | Ignored DMCA | Tor-friendly | Registration |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ETTV [7] | None | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | ? |
| EZTV [6] | TV Series | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | ? |
| KickassTorrents [8] | None | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | ? |
| RARBG | None | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| YIFY | Movies | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | ? |
| What.CD | Music | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Oink's_Pink_Palace | Music | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Site | Specialization | Was a tracker | Directory | Public | RSS | One-click download | Sortable | Comments | Multi-tracker index | Ignored DMCA | Tor friendly | Registration |
BitTorrent, also referred to as simply torrent, is a communication protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), which enables users to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet in a decentralized manner. The protocol is developed and maintained by Rainberry, Inc., and was first released in 2001. A 2004 study by Cachelogic found that one third of all internet traffic was BitTorrent traffic.
The Pirate Bay is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay allows visitors to search, download, and contribute magnet links and torrent files, which facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing among users of the BitTorrent protocol.
This is a timeline of events in the history of networked file sharing.
isoHunt was an online torrent files index and repository, where visitors could browse, search, download or upload torrents of various digital content of mostly entertainment nature. The website was taken down in October 2013 as a result of a legal action from the MPAA; by the end of October 2013 however, two sites with content presumably mirrored from isohunt.com were reported in media. One of them – isohunt.to – became a de facto replacement of the original site. It is not associated in any way with the old staff or owners of the site, and is to be understood as a separate continuation.
Suprnova.org was a Slovenia-based website that distributed BitTorrent trackers for various music and video files, computer programs and games. Started in late 2002 by Andrej Preston and for a while considered the most popular BitTorrent search engine, Suprnova.org closed in late 2004 after legal threats. The site operators supported the development of the eXeem BitTorrent client software, deeming a fixed website too difficult to operate in the present legal climate. On 2 August 2007, the domain name was donated to The Pirate Bay, which relaunched the site on 21 August 2007.
The use of the BitTorrent protocol for the unauthorized sharing of copyrighted content generated a variety of novel legal issues. While the technology and related platforms are legal in many jurisdictions, law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies are attempting to address this avenue of copyright infringement. Notably, the use of BitTorrent in connection with copyrighted material may make the issuers of the BitTorrent file, link or metadata liable as an infringing party under some copyright laws. Similarly, the use of BitTorrent to procure illegal materials could potentially create liability for end users as an accomplice.
TorrentFreak (TF) is a blog dedicated to reporting the latest news and trends on the BitTorrent protocol and file sharing, as well as on copyright infringement and digital rights.
Torrentz was a Finland-based metasearch engine for BitTorrent, run by an individual known as Flippy and founded on 24 July 2003. It indexed torrents from various major torrent websites and offered compilations of various trackers per torrent that were not necessarily present in the default .torrent file, so that when a tracker was down, other trackers could do the work. It was the second most popular torrent website in 2012.
aXXo is the Internet alias of an individual who released and standardized commercial film DVDs as free downloads on the Internet between 2005 and 2009. The files, which were usually new films, were popular among the file sharing community using peer-to-peer file sharing protocols such as BitTorrent. A download-tracking firm BigChampagne found — in a sampling period in late 2008 — that almost 33.5% of all movie downloads were aXXo torrents. aXXo encoded files to approximately 700 MB – the same size for a compact disc. Due to the re-encoded quality of an aXXo file, the suffix "aXXo" was often used by imitators.
BTDigg is the first Mainline DHT search engine. It participated in the BitTorrent DHT network, supporting the network and making correspondence between magnet links and a few torrent attributes which are indexed and inserted into a database. For end users, BTDigg provides a full-text database search via a Web interface. The Web part of its search system retrieved proper information by a user's text query. The Web search supported queries in European and Asian languages. The project name was an acronym of BitTorrent Digger. It went offline in June 2016, reportedly due to index spam. The site returned later in 2016 at a dot-com domain, went offline again, and is now online. The btdig.com site has its torrent crawler's source code listed on GitHub, dhtcrawler2.
EZTV is a TV torrent distribution group founded in May 2005 and dissolved in April 2015, after a hostile takeover of their domains and brand by "EZCLOUD LIMITED". It quickly became the most visited torrent site for TV shows.
KickassTorrents was a website that provided a directory for torrent files and magnet links to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol. It was founded in 2008 and by November 2014, KAT became the most visited BitTorrent directory in the world, overtaking The Pirate Bay, according to the site's Alexa ranking. KAT went offline on 20 July 2016 when the domain was seized by the U.S. government. The site's proxy servers were shut down by its staff at the same time.
μTorrent, or uTorrent, is a proprietary adware BitTorrent client owned and developed by Rainberry, Inc. The "μ" in its name comes from the SI prefix "micro-", referring to the program's small memory footprint: the program was designed to use minimal computer resources while offering functionality comparable to larger BitTorrent clients such as Vuze or BitComet. μTorrent became controversial in 2015 when many users unknowingly accepted a default option during installation which also installed a cryptocurrency miner.
Popcorn Time is a multi-platform, free software BitTorrent client that includes an integrated media player. The application provides a piracy-based alternative to subscription-based video streaming services such as Netflix. Popcorn Time uses sequential downloading to stream video listed by several torrent websites, and third-party trackers can also be added manually. The legality of the software depends on the jurisdiction.
Nyaa Torrents is a BitTorrent website focused on East Asian media. It is one of the largest public anime-dedicated torrent indexes.
RARBG was a website that provided torrent files and magnet links to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol. From 2014 to 2023, RARBG repeatedly appeared in TorrentFreak's yearly list of most visited torrent websites. It was ranked 4th as of January 2023. The website did not allow users to upload their own torrents.
ZeroNet is a decentralized web-like network of peer-to-peer users, created by Tamas Kocsis in 2015, programming for the network was based in Budapest, Hungary; is built in Python; and is fully open source. Instead of having an IP address, sites are identified by a public key. The private key allows the owner of a site to sign and publish changes, which propagate through the network. Sites can be accessed through an ordinary web browser when using the ZeroNet application, which acts as a local webhost for such pages. In addition to using bitcoin cryptography, ZeroNet uses trackers from the BitTorrent network to negotiate connections between peers. ZeroNet is not anonymous by default, but it supports routing traffic through the Tor network.
1337x is an online website that provides a directory of torrent files and magnet links used for peer-to-peer file sharing through the BitTorrent protocol. According to the TorrentFreak news blog, 1337x is the second-most popular torrent website as of 2023.
YIFY Torrents or YTS was a peer-to-peer release group known for distributing large numbers of movies as free downloads through BitTorrent. YIFY releases were characterised through their small file size, which attracted many downloaders.
123Movies, GoMovies, GoStream, MeMovies or 123movieshub was a network of file streaming websites operating from Vietnam which allowed users to watch films for free. It was called the world's "most popular illegal site" by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) in March 2018, before being shut down a few weeks later on foot of a criminal investigation by the Vietnamese authorities. As of February 2024, websites imitating the brand remain active.
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