RELATED: Top Torrent Sites of 2009: a Visual Guide
As of November 29, 2009, several torrent sites have distinguished themselves by popularity. This list is compiled from reader suggestions, and is updated every few days. This is the long version of the Top 5 list. You are welcome to send us your own suggestions to be included in this bit torrent sites list.
This list is randomly ordered. Special thanks to the many About.com readers who email us each week to help keep this list current.
Virus Warning for P2P Downloaders: before you use any download site or P2P network, make sure you install a reliable antivirus like Avira. While most P2P users are honest, there are vandals who will abuse P2P file sharing as a way to propogate viruses.
Related: How to speed up your Bit Torrent download speeds
- Isohunt.com Currently in a legal dispute with the Canadian Recording Industry Association, Isohunt is a longtime favorite of P2P users. The community at Isohunt also helps police abuse within their network, and reader comments and votes help to identify those torrents which should be avoided.
- Entertane: An obscure-but-good metasearch engine. Pore through eight other torrent sites quickly by using Entertane.com
- Demonoid.com is back online! After legal conflicts in April of 2008, they have reestablished themselves outside of the USA. Demonoid is still a private community, and members are held liable for any leeching that their invited friends do in this community. If you are lucky enough to get a Demonoid membership, invite your friends carefully, lest you lose your own membership.
- Torrent Root: another metasearch engine, Torrent Root will pore through other search engines on your behalf, and display the results in a slick tabbed interface for your easy browsing. WARNING: the Torrent Root web page has recently been infected by scareware and phishing viruses. The webmasters seem to have purged the infection, but fair warning: with any P2P browsing, protect yourself by installing a reliable antivirus like Avira.
- Torrentportal.com
- Alive Torrents Alive Torrents is a relatively new site. It focuses on torrents that have distinguished themselves as having a solid swarm base and an active readership.
- Flixflux: a United Kingdom torrent site that is very popular with European downloaders
- The Pirate Bay
April 18, 2009: the Stockholm district court has sentenced the four Pirate Bay founders to a year in prison, and over $USD 3.5 million in fines. This is as punishment for violating their country's copyright laws. More on this shocking court ruling here...
- yourBittorrent: a newer service, yourBittorrent has a clean and simple design and fast searching. Keep your eye on this site.
- Thunderbytes: As of July 2009, Thunderbytes is a family-friendly site with content that is good for kids and parents.
- Torrentbox.com FYI: like Isohunt, Torrentbox is being sued by the MPAA as of February 28, 2006. The days for this fine search engine may be numbered.
- YouTorrent.com Still in beta testing format, this new torrent site claims to be the largest legal torrent search engine today. Accordingly, the result sets are much smaller than the "pirate" counterparts, but definitely try this site for yourself.
- Zoozle.org: a competent German search engine for finding specific files, cracks, and serials.
- Vertor: this torrent service claims to filter out bad torrents, viruses, DRM locks, passwords, and fakes. Many readers are pleased with Vertor, and thus far their service has been exemplary. Definitely give Vertor a try.
- Torrent2crazy: this newer torrent site has a clean and uncluttered interface. It doesn't offer the user feedback system of Isohunt, but the torrent database is solid.
- Torrentengine.co.cc: a very spartan-looking torrent engine, with very fast results and and icons that denote verified sources.
- Torrentscan.com (a "meta-search" engine, which is a search engine that searches other search engines)
- H33T: Don't let the plain site design fool you: this newer torrent site has gotten very positive reviews from About.com readers.
- BiteNova (formerly known as "Bi-Torrents", BiteNova is a free Torrent site with a spartan look and fast searching format.)
- Torrentreactor.to (Torrentreactor has made a comeback from a hijacking and an uncooperative hosting service. They have moved to a different server setup and a Tonga country domain outside the USA.)
The next 15 torrent sites are continued here...
Special mention: Torrent-Finder.com (This site has been submitted by three readers as their personal favorite torrent search engine. It "meta-searches" 159 torrent sites as of this writing. Special thanks to Dina, Suresh, and ChaOSthEory for this submission.)
Other Related BitTorrent articles:
- Editor's Choice: 5 Best Torrent Search Engines
- Torrents 101: How BitTorrent Downloading Works.
- The Best BitTorrent Client Software of 2008.
- Meet Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent open source code.
- Overview of P2P copyright legalities.
- Tip: How to speed up your torrent client download speed
Legal warning for new torrent users: while P2P file sharing technology is completely legal, many of the files traded through P2P are copyrighted. Uploading P2P files may put you at serious risk of a civil lawsuit in the USA, Canada, Australia, and the UK. These lawsuits are usually class-action suits, filed against groups of users who blatantly copy and distribute copyrighted materials. Recently, the MPAA, the RIAA, and the governments of England and Australia took several thousand users to court, demanding that they pay thousands of dollars in copyright infringement penalties. These P2P lawsuits are very real, and whether or not they are successful, they are extreme financial and emotional burdens on the defendant.
ISP warning: your Internet service provider may choose to release logs of your downloading/uploading activity to potential copyright plaintiffs. The more megabytes you download/upload, the more you risk being sued by copyright protection groups.
