You've got your VPN subscription and you are excited to start torrenting. If you are like me, you may be wondering which Torrent sites are best. What makes each torrent site special? And which torrent site should I head to first? There are dozens of torrenting options out there and finding the best torrent site isn't easy without a little bit of guidance.
In this guide, we will simplify the entire experience by showing you the best torrent sites for your VPN. As a result, you will be able to quickly find the kind of content you are looking for to start downloading it right away.
Warning:
ProPrivacy does not condone or encourage the torrenting of any sort of copyrighted material! Torrenting copyrighted materials is illegal in most countries and could end with you facing criminal charges.
What is a torrent site and how does it work?
If you are new to the world of torrenting, you may be wondering how it all works. Torrenting has been around for a long time, and it is a way that people all over the world share content with each other directly.
When most people think about torrenting, they think about downloading something they want as quickly as they can. In reality, the torrenting community is made up of both seeders (the people who share content with others) and leechers (the people who download files).
The thing to remember is that the entire process of giving and receiving is happening from user to user; computer to computer; peer-to-peer (P2P). A torrent site is actually just a middle-man, where you can find listings for files that are physically stored on a seeder's computer.
When you download a file P2P, you don't download it from just one seeder. Torrent files are broken up into loads of manageable chunks. When you leech a file, you download those chunks from multiple users (known as the swarm).
This ensures that if one seeder goes offline, you can still download the content you are looking for. It also means that you can download a file more quickly – by getting multiple chunks from different users all at the same time!
How do you download Torrents?
Now that we have established that Torrent sites are simply online communities where you can find seeders and leechers, it is time to consider how we actually download the files. The Torrent site is just a directory of all the seeds that are available and to actually leech from the swarm you are going to need specialist computer software known as a torrent client. The most popular torrent client currently used is uTorrent, but BitTorrent is another long-standing client that many people also use to connect to each other P2P.
To download torrent files, all you need is to download one of those torrent clients. After that you can use the torrent sites in this guide to find seeds for the files you want. And, with that done, you will be able to start downloading from the swarm using your torrent client!
Which seed should I choose?
An important thing to remember is that you should always pick a torrent file that has a lot of seeders. When there are more seeders, your torrent download will happen much more quickly.
When you download P2P from many users, you acquire all the chunks of the torrent file faster. For this reason, it is always a good idea to look for a file that has the highest possible number of seeders.
This is why the best torrent sites allow you to see exactly which potential downloads have a lot of active seeders. In fact, most torrent sites will show you exactly how many seeders and leechers are involved with each file in the search results.
How to find the content you want on a Torrent site
Torrent sites all have a search function and finding the files you want is as simple as searching for whatever you want.
When the results appear, look for a torrent file with a lot of seeders – and you are ready to download the file using your torrent client. However, please remember to take your time and be sure you have determined that it is not a fake torrent file.
Torrent sites are filled with dodgy downloads that can cause infection with malware – so you must be careful to only download legitimate files. Luckily, this isn't as hard as you might think...
How to spot malicious downloads on a torrent site
There are plenty of ways to identify dodgy files and potential malicious activity. You can:
- Check the comments – Most torrent sites have an active community of seeders and leechers who actively review each available download. Relying on the opinions of fellow users is the easiest way to find out whether an available download is legitimate.
- Check the ratio of seeders/leechers – Legitimate torrents will usually be highly popular. If you can see lots of people seeding and downloading the file, then this is almost certainly the real file you are looking for.
- Look at the file size – Checking the size of the file is a good way to ensure you are downloading something that seems legitimate.
- Use the right filters – We recommend against downloading the ‘most recent' uploads, as it is harder to verify the authenticity of these files.
- Check the file type – If a file is an executable (.exe, .bin, .com, .jar etc.), then this should ring alarm bells (unless you are purposefully downloading software).
How to search for torrents and download them
Looking for torrents online isn't particularly hard. The easiest way is to simply search for a torrent in Google by typing the name of the file you want next to the word "torrent”.
Alternatively, you can search for the torrent on the torrent site itself. Most torrent sites are better for some things than others, which means that by picking the best torrent site you are much more likely to find the file you want.
Once you have found the file you want, and you have checked to make sure it is a legitimate file, all you need to do is click "Get Torrent”. This will redirect you to your torrent client (uTorrent, BitTorent, qBitTorrent, etc.) where you can click "download”. Now all you need to do is wait for the download to complete.
How to conceal your IP address from the swarm
A VPN conceals your real IP address from the torrent sites that you visit – as well as from the seeders and leechers you connect to. This provides security against malevolent torrenters who may attempt to hack you. It also protects you by ensuring that nobody knows where (and who) you really are.
A VPN is a super useful tool that will allow you to:
- Conceal your identity and location from the services you use.
- Prevent government surveillance and ISP tracking.
- Prevent ISP throttling- which will let you download torrents faster.
- Unblock torrent sites that are unavailable where you live.
- Access geo-restricted services from around the world such as Netflix and BBC iPlayer.
Please remember that there are hundreds of consumer-facing VPNs on the market, and not every VPN is suitable for torrenting safely. To find a VPN that is good for torrenting please visit our in-depth Torrenting VPNs article.
The Best Torrent Sites in 2024
Now that you know what torrenting is and how to do it safely, it is time to take a look at the best torrent sites. Below we have provided a list of our favorite torrent sites, with details about the kinds of content each site is popular for.
1337x – Mixed content
1337x is another popular torrent repository that has torrents for an eclectic mix of content. According to traffic monitoring services, this is the world's third most used torrent site – which is why we popped it in third on our list!
As with our other recommended torrent sites, 1337x is easy to navigate, easy for checking the authenticity of files, and has a massive user base that allows for quick download times.
We enjoy using the simple user interface, which has a clearly organized path for each of its directories.
Torrentz2 – Mixed content
Torrentz2 is the official replacement for Torrentz.eu – which voluntarily shut down its servers back in 2016, after being put under pressure by copyright holders and the government. Torrentz2 is another all-rounder that provides access to a wide variety of downloads.
Torrentz2 actually provides its search results by quickly scanning several other search engines in order to provide torrent files from here, there, and everywhere. At the time of writing, this was allowing it to provide access to in excess of 60 million torrents. And it makes it into our top 5 because it is easy to navigate, easy to use, and one of the most reliable torrent trackers available online.
RARGB – Mixed content
Initially, a Bulgarian torrent tracker, RARBG is now based in Amsterdam. It is a torrent site that has been around since 2005. RARGB indexes all kinds of torrents, is up-to-date, and has a lively community of users who comment on torrents. This makes it easy to identify fake files and malicious downloads.
As is the case with most of our recommendations, RARGB is easy to browse and has a great search function.
Due to its popularity, RARGB is one of the torrent sites that is often blocked by ISPs by request of the government. For this reason, you may need a VPN to access it (and you should always use a VPN when downloading, as is the case when using all the torrent sites in this article). It is also worth noting that several scam versions of RARGB have been circulating online, so check the URL to ensure you are on the official rargb.to website.
LimeTorrents – Mixed content
LimeTorents is another popular torrent tracker that will provide you with downloads for just about anything that interests you. It is highly praised for offering fast downloads and an ultra-massive database. It also has an easy-to-use health meter for torrents that allows you to figure out if the torrent is legit quickly.
We find it easy to search on this site, and the content is broken down into categories, making it nice to browse. And it is easy to get information about each torrent, such as the date the torrent was added, its size, the seeder, etc.
TorLock – Mixed content
TorLock is a relatively new torrent site that has quickly gained popularity. It has a large selection of torrent categories, is cleanly laid out, and is ad-free. It features Top 100 downloads and Fresh categories – which makes it good for browsing and finding torrents on the fly. Other than that, it does everything you would expect a modern torrent site to do. And it is pretty fast.
The only drawback is that because TorLock is relatively new, it has yet to develop an active community that leaves feedback on torrents – making it harder to figure out the legitimacy of torrents. However, if you are confident that you can spot good torrents, this is definitely a site worth checking out.
NewKATCR – Mixed content
Newkatcr.co is the replacement for KATCR.co, which itself was a replacement for the much-loved but now-defunct KickassTorrents. It is an easy to navigate torrent tracker that is easily broken down into categories so that you can browse.
One thing to watch out for is that there are many illegitimate mirrors of Kickass Torrent, so you will need to be careful to stick to the official KATCR.co website. Always check the URL and be sure you aren't accessing a dodgy version of Kickass.
We find NewKATCR to have a simple interface that is very easy to use, and we have no problem finding useful torrent links from those search results.
Is Torrenting illegal?
The act of connecting to another person's computer Peer-to-Peer to share files with them is not illegal. The same goes for the BitTorrent protocol itself, which, again, is not illegal. This means it is possible to torrent without actually breaking the law.
However, any time that people seed or leech copyrighted music, movies, TV shows, books, games, software etc. – they are engaging in copyright piracy. This copyright piracy is illegal rather than the act of torrenting itself.
If you are discovered torrenting copyrighted content, you could face both civil and crinimal charges. There is plenty of legitmate content to torrent and we urge readers to use torrenting sites for legal purposes.
How do I unblock torrent sites?
If you are living in a country where torrenting sites have been blocked by the government, you will need a VPN for torrenting.
A VPN allows you to bypass local censorship by pretending to be in a different country. For more information on using a VPN to unblock torrent sites, please check out the 10 best VPNs for torrenting.