YTS remains at the top of the list in 2024, as the torrent indexer continues to draw millions of visitors per day.

That’s quite an achievement considering the legal troubles the site has faced in the past, plus the fact that it only features movies.

The annual list of popular torrent sites remains largely unchanged. There are a few positional changes, but the list almost entirely consists of the same names as last year.

There is one unavoidable newcomer, following the closure of RARBG. While some RARBG knockoffs came close, the vacant spot is filled by a familiar name, LimeTorrents, which made a comeback after being absent last year

We have limited the list to globally available English-language torrent sites, which means that sites such as Rutracker.org, Yggtorrent.qa, Etoland.co.kr, and Zamunda.net are not included, even though they have substantial traffic numbers.

Finally, we have to stress that the yearly ranking is based on single domain names. If proxy sites and alternative domains were taken into account, The Pirate Bay and others would rank higher.

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Below is the full list of the top ten most-visited torrent site domains at the start of the new year. The list is based on various traffic reports. Please note that this list is created as a historical record, to keep track of the popularity of these sites over time.

We do not recommend or endorse using any of these sites. Some are known to link to malicious ads, at least incidentally. BitTorrent technology itself is not illegal but may only be used to share content with permission from the rightsholder.

Top 10 Torrent Sites of 2024

1. YTS
2. 1337x
3. NYAA
4. TorrentGalaxy
5. The Pirate Bay
6. FitGirl Repacks
7. Skidrow & Reloaded
8. EZTV
9. LimeTorrents
10. IGGGAMES

1. YTS.mx

YTS.mx is the unofficial successor of the defunct YTS or YIFY group, which shut down a few years ago.

YTS has been the target of several lawsuits in the U.S. over the past few years. The operator signed a consent judgment and agreed to hand over user data to rightsholders. As a result, several YTS users received settlement requests or were sued instead.

2. 1337x

In 2024, 1337x retains its spot in the top three. Unlike some other sites, it has a dedicated group of uploaders and bots that provide fresh content daily.

1337x offers a wide variety of torrents. The site banned official YTS releases after the above-mentioned controversy.

3. NYAA.si

NYAA.si is a popular resurrection of the anime torrent site NYAA . While there is fierce competition from alternative pirate streaming sites, the torrent portal continues to do well, climbing two positions compared to last year.

4. TorrentGalaxy

Launched a little over five years ago, TorrentGalaxy is a relative newcomer. It has a dedicated group of uploaders and an active community. In addition to torrents, TorrentGalaxy also makes some releases available for streaming.

5. The Pirate Bay

After celebrating its 20th anniversary a few months ago The Pirate Bay has now dropped to the fifth spot.

The Pirate Bay continues to operate from its .org domain but is also available through many proxies. If all proxy domains were counted, the notorious torrent site would still battle for the first spot in this list.

6. FitGirl Repacks

FitGirl Repacks is by no means a traditional torrent site. It is the home of a popular repacker who releases slimmed-down cracked versions of popular games, which keeps download times to a minimum.

FitGirl, who we interviewed in 2020, publishes torrents on other sites too but also offers magnet links of their own, which is why we included the site here.

7. Skidrow & RELOADED

Skidrow and RELOADED are two iconic game-cracking groups. This likely served as inspiration for the people running Skidrowreloaded.com, which is a blog-style release site featuring popular game releases.

The site’s X account has been banned, but the domain itself remains online, keeping the seventh spot after last year’s debut.

8. EZTV.re

EZTV.re is a controversial TV-torrent distribution group that hijacked the EZTV brand from the original group, which was forced to shut down soon after.

The site still has some decent traffic, mostly from loyal TV-show followers who haven’t junked on the streaming bandwagon.

8. LimeTorrents

LimeTorrents has been around since 2009. Like many other entries in this list, it is blocked by ISPs in countries around the world, which seems to hurt overall traffic somewhat. It dropped out of the top 10 last year but made a comeback in 2024

10. IGGGAMES

Due to IGG-Games’ popularity, another gaming-focused site is listed in this year’s Top 10. IGG-Games has made headlines on a few occasions and continues to draw in millions of monthly visitors

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Disclaimer: We use various data checks, including reports from Similarweb. Proxies and clear copycats of working sites are excluded. Please keep in mind that many sites have mirrors or alternative domains, which are often not taken into account here. The yearly list is published as an informational / news resource. The 2023 torrent site list is archived .

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The Pirate Bay and search engines are not a happy marriage recently. On the contrary.

For example, we previously reported on Google’s decision to remove thepiratebay.org from its search results in countries where ISPs are required to block the site.

Searching for The Pirate Bay

This type of deindexing is not unique to Google. As highlighted in the past, Bing has effectively wiped all Pirate Bay URLs from its index until only the main homepage was left. That move sunsequently forced DuckDuckGo and other Microsoft-powered search engines to do the same.

Today, there are still some more exotic search engines that are capable of finding Pirate Bay links easily, including non-infringing ones. However, Russia’s Yandex can be scrapped from that list.

Founded in 1997, Yandex is one of the oldest search engines on the web. The service is used around the world but is particularly popular in Russia where it has a majority market share.

It’s known that Russia requires search engines, including foreign ones, to remove results linked to pirate sites . This also applies to Yandex, but these measures don’t typically expand globally.

Today, it’s not hard to find most popular pirate sites on Yandex internationally. This applies to YTS, Fmoviesz, Aniwave, and even the Russian torrent site Rutor. For some reason, however, The Pirate Bay’s official domain appears to have vanished.

The Pirate Bay Vanished

A basic search for “The Pirate Bay” brings up plenty of results but these link to proxies, the Wikipedia page, and other related entries. In the locations we searched from, however, thepiratebay.org is nowhere to be found.

Finding the official domain isn’t rocket science as it’s mentioned on the Wikipedia page that’s linked in the information panel on the right. However, a ‘site: search’, that typically lists all pages from a specified domain name, returns no results at all in our tests.

Interestingly, the same site-specific command does return plenty of links for other pirate sites, so The Pirate Bay appears to be in a league of its own.

Update: After finishing this article the site: search started to show some results for thepiratebay.org again in our tests. It’s still not featured in any of the top results for “ The Pirate Bay “. It’s possible that Yandex changed something and the outcome may also depend on people’s location, so results may vary.

Why Yandex has taken this decision is unknown. We requested a comment from the company, hoping to get an explanation, but that inquiry remains unanswered.

At this point, The Pirate Bay probably no longer cares about yet another ‘blocking’ effort. The site’s traffic has been hurt by similar measures over the past years, but plenty of loyal users still manage to find their way to it.

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Note: For those who are wondering; China’s top search engine Baidu can no longer find Thepiratebay.org either.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

With millions of monthly visits, FileList is one of the largest private torrent trackers.

The site has been around for sixteen years and weathered many storms, including a crackdown by Romanian law enforcement which seized its domain name in 2020.

Last weekend, the journey appeared close to an end when the site’s main operator, EboLLa, decided that he would rather spend time on other parts of his life. With no trusted successor in sight, shutting down appeared to be the only viable option.

Many people would volunteer to take over, but leaving the tracker in the hands of a relative stranger didn’t feel right for the operator. Running a private torrent site that stores sensitive personal data of numerous people is a massive responsibility.

In many cases, this would’ve been the end of the matter. After a few weeks, the site would cease to exist, turning into a distant memory with the passing of time. For FileList, however, the story isn’t quite over yet.

Founder Returns

The outpouring of support and shock following the shutdown announcement motivated one of FileList’s original founders, “God”, to return to the nest. He will take over the technical role of the current operator to ensure that the tracker can continue in the years to come.

“Your voice has been heard, even now. I am delighted to announce that the website will not be shutting down!” EboLLA writes.

“One of the founders of the website, God, is back and will take over the technical aspect to ensure the site continues to thrive. He is trustworthy, loyal, and things will certainly go well from this point of view.”

New Sysop

The new boss will team up with “Oana”, another trusted member of the site who is promoted to Sysop. In that role, she will handle all staff-related issues, server payments, and other internal matters.

“Together, they will continue the necessary work to keep this website alive,” EboLLa notes.

The message represents a sigh of relief for the many regular users of the tracker, some of whom have been loyal visitors for over a decade. For the current operator, those are also the last words he shares with the community, as he permanently retires.

For copyright holders and law enforcement, the sudden change of plans means that they can’t cross the popular torrent tracker off their list just yet. Instead, everything is back to the status quo.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Private torrent sites, or private trackers as they are commonly known, have a special place in the piracy ecosystem.

These sites tend to be more community-oriented than public torrent and streaming sites, which most people simply visit with a hit-and-run mentality.

Troubles

Many private trackers have come and gone over the years. The Romanian-based tracker FileList.io is one of the bigger ones to survive, although it came close to shutting down a few years ago when Romanian authorities seized its domain name.

The enforcement action was a wake-up call for both staff and users of the members-only tracker, but it didn’t mark the end of the road. FileList simply switched from the seized .ro domain to an .io version and with the database unscathed, it kept on going.

According to recent traffic stats from SimilarWeb, the tracker hasn’t lost its appeal. With an estimated average of roughly six million monthly visits, the site continues to draw a massive audience. That, however, is about to change.

Pending Shutdown

A few hours ago, FileList sysop “EboLLa” informed the site’s members that the doors will permanently close in a few weeks. This isn’t the result of legal pressure; it’s a conscious and well-evaluated life choice.

“Unfortunately, I no longer have the time to run the site. A site like this requires quite a lot of commitment and my priorities in everyday life have changed in recent years. Time is the most precious resource for all of us and I have invested enough time here,” the operator writes.

The decision was a difficult one. FileList’s operator long considered handing the reigns to a successor, but that is easier said than done, especially after the dream candidate was no longer an option.

“I don’t have anyone to leave it to. ToXiC, the one who was going to take my place is no longer with us,” EboLLa writes.

Responsibilities

Of course, dozens of people will be eager to step up and run the site, but leaving the tracker to a relative stranger doesn’t feel right for the operator. Running a private tracker that stores sensitive personal data of numerous people is a massive responsibility.

There are various angles for potential abuse and handing this type of power and control to someone, even if they’re well-intentioned, simply doesn’t feel right. Instead, EboLLa prefers to close the tracker’s doors indefinitely.

“It is quite difficult to find a person who is integrated here and shares the same values and has the same dedication that you have enjoyed for the last 16 years. I decided that the best thing to do is to close the site rather than risk something like this.”

Goodbyes

The operator says that the decision was made with the community at heart, and he thanks all members for contributing to the site over the years. That includes all the files that were shared, the lively discussions, and financial contributions to pay the server bills.

FileList no longer accepts any donations at the time of writing and the current funds are sufficient to keep the lights on for a few more weeks. After that, the site’s users will have to go elsewhere.

“During this time you can still enjoy the site, download what you need from here and post your goodbye message in the thread. After ~3 months, sometime around January 2024, the site will be closed permanently,” EboLLa concludes.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The sudden closure of torrent site RARBG three months ago will be remembered as one of the most significant since the invention of the protocol, and despite competition from a laundry list of candidates.

Operating a large public torrent site for 15 years is a considerable feat. Doing so in an incredibly hostile environment, as one of the world’s most recognizable ‘pirate’ brands, is certainly unusual. Doing so with virtually no downtime and without any assistance (or protection) from Cloudflare is absolutely unprecedented.

RARBG made everything look effortless. Then just like that, RARBG was gone. For reasons highlighted earlier, a site like RARBG isn’t easily replaced. The combination of content, stability, reliability, branding, and visibility was rare in a public site, and trying to replicate the formula would require motivation and the secret sauce that somehow kept RARBG online.

90 Days Later

Just over 90 days have passed since RARBG disappeared, a short lifetime in the online piracy world. The hole RARBG left behind in the public ecosystem may not ever be fully repaired, but traffic blackholes are much more quickly and readily consumed.

Over the past three months nearly all major torrent sites offering the same types of content as RARBG have seen impressive gains. Sites targeting different regions, and/or carrying content not previously offered by RARBG, have shown no obvious shifts in traffic.

With no surprise newcomers to the public torrent site scene, it’s likely that many of the leading sites now enjoy an increased market share (SimilarWeb data) .

RARBG shut down on the last day of May so traffic data for that month (blue) is not distorted in any meaningful way and can be compared to traffic generated by the other sites in the same period. As the chart shows, RARBG’s traffic fell off the edge of a cliff in the two months that followed (June/red, July/yellow), with the other sites all showing gains.

Sample Facts and Figures

An interesting observation is that despite widespread reporting of RARBG’s shutdown, in July the domain still received an impressive 4.6m visits. It would’ve been trivial to place a few ads on the page to make some easy pocket money but for their own reasons, the site’s operators haven’t done that.

In overall visitor numbers, YTS has obviously done very well. Before RARBG’s shutdown in May, YTS was receiving around 86.7m visits per month. At the end of July, that already impressive figure had increased to 102.3m, which may be one of the highest totals ever achieved by a torrent site in a single month.

Between May and July, torrent site 1337x also picked up significant traffic; around 16m more visits in July than May according to SimilarWeb. The Pirate Bay enjoyed a smaller boost, around 4 million extra by July, but one site in particular seems to have really struck gold.

According to SimilarWeb, TorrentGalaxy received around 18 million visits in May. The next month that had risen to 34.8m but in July, the number of visits reached 40 million, just a million or so fewer visits than RARBG enjoyed in May before it shut down.

While the loss of RARBG is more than just traffic, it’s safe to conclude that supply easily kept up with demand in the face of an unexpected crisis.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Pirate sites come and go, often without being noticed by the public at large. That was certainly not the case when RARBG said its goodbyes yesterday.

The popular torrent site had millions of daily users spread across several domain names. This included the flagship .to domain which currently displays a farewell message .

After a brief intermezzo, many users simply began their search for alternatives, perhaps unaware that the effects of RARBG’s shutdown go beyond the site itself, leading to a much broader impact, including on popular ‘alternatives’.

RARBG Releases & Tracker

On the surface, RARBG looked like any other torrent site but it was one of the few platforms to release a steady stream of fresh content. All pirated movies and TV-shows come from somewhere and RARBG acted as a key bridge between scene sources and the public at large.

This content was picked up by RARBG’s bots from external sources before being posted on the site itself. ExtraTorrent’s in-house release groups worked in a similar way, including under the ‘ETTV’ label, before shutting down last year due to a lack of funds .

The absence of new releases is likely to make the overall piracy ecosystem more vulnerable. The same can also be said for RARBG’s dedicated tracker, which was also pulled offline yesterday, abruptly terminating millions of connections. And it doesn’t end there.

Torrent and Streaming Sites Feel the Pain

With another popular source of pirate movie and TV-show releases gone, the piracy supply side is shrinking. The vast majority of public torrent sites don’t have their own release channels. Instead, they relied on external parties such as RARBG.

This equally applies to direct download sites and streaming portals. While pirate streaming sites have become much bigger than their torrent peers in recent years, their movie and TV-show libraries can often be traced to torrent sources.

There are still alternative sources available, for now, but with RARBG gone the choices are more limited. This means there will be considerable pressure on the remaining suppliers, to say the least.

In addition to the typical pirate sites, RARBG links also appeared in dedicated pirate channels on platforms such as Telegram. These no longer work. The same also applies to users of software such as Sonarr, for whom RARBG was a popular source too.

From the Ashes?

The above may sound grim but it does illustrate the important position RARBG held in the piracy scene. That said, pirates have shown to be resilient in the past so there will likely be others willing to take the risk and fill the void.

Those will include copycats who will try to take over the RARBG brand. The same happened in the past with EZTV, YTS, KickassTorrents and Torrentz, with various levels of success.

Things aren’t getting any easier though. In its farewell message, RARBG summed up several reasons for shutting down. Aside from tragic personal issues, they included rising hosting costs and a decline in revenue. That’s becoming a trend too.

Inflation…

While we haven’t seen inflation mentioned as a reason to shut down a pirate site before, financial struggles are prevalent. As mentioned earlier, ETTV cited the same reason to close shop last year and others went before them .

So what about the sites that remain? Speaking with TorrentFreak, the operator of LimeTorrents mentions that the site has no plans to stop but they confirmed that rising hosting costs and low adverting revenues are indeed a real concern.

That said, inflation and other cost-related issues also work in favor of pirate sites, the site’s operator mentioned. After all, legitimate platforms such as Netflix and Disney+ cost money, while torrent sites are free and offer more content.

All in all, we can conclude that the broader piracy ecosystem has lost a key player that was much more than just another torrent site. While others could take its place, if they are willing to take the risk, the loss of RARBG is undoubtedly a considerable setback.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The shock closure yesterday of one of the world’s oldest and most reliable torrent sites ranks as one of the biggest surprises in recent years.

Founded in 2008, RARBG had a reputation for taking the fundamentals seriously. The site offered the usual spread of movies and TV shows, available in various qualities and numerous file sizes. The site didn’t cover every single release but when trawling the archives, it certainly felt like it might.

Consistent, Organized, Predictable

RARBG also became known for consistently offering subtitles for most movie and TV show releases. Long before legal streaming services made any serious attempt, RARBG’s curation of subtitles helped the deaf enjoy films again, without any of the frustrations associated with mislabeled files and out of sync releases.

In common with other torrent sites operating publicly, most RARBG users downloaded their files and headed for the hills. For the majority, seeding was either a dirty word, one they’d never heard before, or perhaps didn’t understand. Hit-and-run rates of 98%+ showed the scale of the problem but on RARBG, a lack of public seeders rarely presented a problem.

As if by magic, a single seed would often pop up when people needed one most, meaning that incomplete torrents were a rare occurrence. At least until yesterday.

Torrented Back to Life?

With RARBG’s indexes gone and trackers offline, the file-sharing scene may never be the same again. It will continue, of course, but filling that type of gap at scale, with the same level of accessible reliability, won’t be easy to pull off.

And then there’s the not insignificant loss of RARBG’s content indexes. With releases meticulously labeled and then tagged by genre, actor, director and more, replacing something like that in the public torrent scene would take considerable effort, if anyone could summon up the motivation to even try.

In short, an otherwise ordinary Wednesday offered nothing when it began, yet still took everything away from RARBG users in the space of a few hours. Whether the middle of the week had second thoughts is unclear but a few hours ago, the keys to much of the RARBG torrent network suddenly reappeared online in an unexpected format.

Yo! Magnets!

While RARBG supplied users with .torrent files to download content via BitTorrent clients, the site also offered magnet links, accessible by clicking the magnet-shaped icons next to each release.

For those with torrent clients configured to accept magnet links, transfers took place much like regular torrents, largely because magnet links provided by RARBG received help from RARBG’s regular BitTorrent trackers.

The beauty of magnet links is that the lack of trackers when a site disappears doesn’t stop users from downloading content. Furthermore, .torrent files are bulky, unlike magnet links which are easily represented in a line of plain text. In short, regular text files can contain thousands of magnet links in a just a few kilobytes. As such, they are easily shared online.

A few hours ago two repositories appeared on GitHub with zero fanfare. Created by user ‘2004content’, the first repo labeled ‘rarbg’ contains nothing. The same can’t be said about the other.

Three Ordinary .TXT Files

The three files of interest are basic .txt files. When loaded into a capable text editor, the first file (moviesrarbg.txt) appears to contain magnet links related to RARBG movie releases; a staggering 117,233 releases overall.

The remaining pair (showsrarbg.txt and showsothers.txt) appear to contain magnet links related to TV shows and series previously released on RARBG. The first contains 12,969 magnet links but the second contains considerably more – 137,669 magnet links collectively referencing the same number of releases.

Random Text or The Real Deal?

Verifying that these magnet links are indeed what they claim to be presents two key problems. The first is the huge number of links versus sensibly available resources. The second comes with a standard reminder; downloading and sharing copyrighted content, even using a magnet link, is illegal almost everywhere.

As a result, we don’t recommend the use of the magnet links listed in the text archives, and certainly not for infringement purposes. However, through the use of a small number of specialist tools, it is possible to obtain detailed metadata from a magnet link, without downloading or sharing any of the referenced content, infringing or otherwise. For a general idea of how someone might go about that, the TorrentParts project on GitHub may be of interest, although other techniques do exist.

We can’t confirm that the text file data references the entire RARBG movie/TV show collection but with some magnet links now confirmed as referencing the material they claim to reference, it’s certainly possible that a large part of RARBG’s video indexes appear in this three file collection on GitHub.

Update: RARBG Shutdown is a Major Blow to the Pirate Ecosystem

Image credit

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Founded in 2008, RARBG evolved to become a key player in the torrent ecosystem.

The site didn’t only attract millions of monthly visitors from all over the globe, it was also a major release hub, bridging the gap between the Scene and the broader pirate public.

Today, the site’s fifteen year run unexpectedly came to an end. In a message posted on the site’s front page, the team says its farewells. This message has been separately confirmed by a source familiar with the matter.

RARBG cites multiple reasons behind the surprise decision, including COVID-related health problems which led to the tragic death of one of the people involved. The war between Russia and Ukraine also impacted the team, with RARBG suggesting that it had members fighting on both sides.

“The past 2 years have been very difficult for us – some of the people in our team died due to covid complications, others still suffer the side effects of it – not being able to work at all. Some are also fighting the war in Europe – ON BOTH SIDES,” the team writes.

The rising costs of operating from data centers in Europe also played their part. And with revenue having trouble keeping up with the rising costs, shutting down the site ultimately seemed the best solution.

“Inflation makes our daily expenses impossible to bare. Therefore we can no longer run this site without massive expenses that we can no longer cover out of pocket. After an unanimous vote we’ve decided that we can no longer do it.”

“We are sorry :( Bye,” the message concludes.

The shutdown also marks the end of the popular RARBG releases, many of which were shared through other pirate sites as well. These high quality releases which, aside from the early days never included CAMs, are among the most downloaded in history.

Today’s shutdown is one of the largest in the history of torrent sites. It’s also the first major closure since the 2015/2016 period, when KickassTorrents, Torrentz, and ExtraTorrent all left the scene.

Needless to say, there will be plenty of copycats who are eager to take over the RARBG brand. However, the real RARBG is no more.

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Update: Over 267,000 Movie & TV Show Magnet Links Appear Online

Update: RARBG Shutdown is a Major Blow to the Pirate Ecosystem

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

1337x.to is the go-to destination for many seasoned BitTorrent users. The site has been around for fifteen years and is home to many reputable uploaders.

Over the years 1337x has steadily climbed through the ranks, building a stable and loyal userbase.

With over 60 million monthly visits to its main domain name, 1337x is currently the second most used torrent site , trailing only behind YTS.mx, while beating The Pirate Bay. This also means that if something breaks, people take notice.

1337x Troubles

1337x has had its fair share of issues over the years. The forum, for example, has been offline for years despite still being promoted throughout the site. The same is true for the site’s chat function, which is offline as well.

Most users can live with these shortcomings, as they are mostly interested in finding the latest torrents. However, that has started to become a problem as well recently, as 1337x’s search function is not functioning as it should.

Over the past few days, many users have complained that they are unable to find recent uploads. A quick inspection of the site shows that new content is still being added, exemplified by recent torrents in the “most popular” and “trending” lists.

No Torrents After April 10

While they do exist, finding these recent torrents using direct searches seems to be a problem. It appears that the search function only shows torrents uploaded on or before April 10, more than two weeks ago.

TorrentFreak reached out to 1337x’s operator to get a comment on this problem, but we haven’t heard back. Previous requests for comment remained unanswered as well, which isn’t really a surprise as the domain’s MX records, which specify the mail server, are gone.

Based on available information, the search problems appear purely technical in nature, likely related to a simple database issue. If and when the issue will be fixed is unknown.

On Reddit, some people have pointed out that some 1337x mirrors can still find recent torrents. While that may be the case, none of these sites are official. They likely scrape the official site or use other data sources.

This certainly isn’t the first time that 1337x has run into trouble. Last year, the official 1337x.to domain name stopped working entirely after it expired. That issue was resolved fairly quickly, however.

Update April 26: The search problems appear to be fixed now.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.