Public Torrent Websites
November 07, 07 by sharky 19,068 viewsPopular ‘Public’ torrent websites (accessible to all - in most cases)
With great popularity in the BitTorrent community, comes great competition. There are new torrent sites popping up all the time. Everyone has differing opinions to which are the best sites - we like certain sites for certain things, so we use multiple sites, as do most. So there is no best site, just sites with different virtues. Here’s a comparison and review of some of the top public torrent websites.
Be sure to check out our Top 100 BitTorrent sites.
Mininova - www.mininova.org
This is an excellent site to browse through categories and their subcategories. Has categories no one else has (3,577 torrents for audio books and 15,000+ E books, plus a variety of “other” classifications!) Mininova search results show 300 per page which can be easily sorted through each category! Users can add and read other user ‘comments’ on specific torrents - there is a mini forum attached to each, so you’ll be certain to get the best stuff. Torrents in database: 520,000.
The Pirate Bay - thepiratebay.org
The best feature here is the viewing all recently added torrents (which can then be sorted by categories - amazing!) This is a great site for search result filtering and it’s especially easy to browse torrent categories (Music, TV, Movies etc.). If you like new torrents, The Pirate Bay is the place to be. Registered torrents: 650,000.
BT Junkie - btjunkie.org
Not a bad site with oodles of torrents, easy to browse and you can view the files inside each torrent without having to go to another page on the website. The search layout is good too - users have lots of result options, like “showing only torrents that are seeded”. Active Torrents listed: 600,000+.
IsoHunt - www.isohunt.com
I’m not too sure what to say about this site right now. Isohunt is going through some problems and has blocked American access to the torrents (see here to get around that problem); however it’s a great site for content and layout. Users can preview the contents of the torrent before downloading it (without being redirected to another page, so your search results are still right in front of you to compare to other torrents on-the-fly!) Torrents listed: 770,000.
Torrentspy - www.torrentspy.com
This place has lots of torrents, and users can view “today’s torrents” category to find what’s new. The browsing is broken down into many nice sub-categories for the user - there are even categories for newspapers, sheet music, comic books. Torrents listed: approx. 1,200,000. NOTE: Torrentspy (run by IsoHunt) has also blocked access to American visitors.
Torrentz - torrentz.ws
Torrentz is rated #1 for ease-of-use! Great browse features including ‘Todays Added’, ‘Yesterdays Added’ and all main categories. Torrents can be viewed by number of user ratings, too. Also has a nice news feed for the latest P2P stories and articles. The only shortcoming to Torrentz is that the torrents can’t be arranged in their categories (by top seeds, leech, size etc.). Total unique torrents: 571,880.
TorrentReactor - www.torrentreactor.net
A well laid-out site. This website has a ‘Latest Torrent’ page that updates the new torrents every minute, so you’ll want to refresh the page often! Users can search the most popular torrents, top torrents and browse the torrent categories and sub-categories. It has a neat ’search cloud’ on the main page. Torrents listed: unknown.
TorrentPortal - www.torrentportal.com
This is a decent site. Users have lots of search filters to choose from, like “hide dead” torrents. Files in torrents can be viewed and compared without having to go to a different page. Newly added torrents are shown on the main page. Torrents listed: 1,100,000.
A Comparison of the TOP 5 sites.
Now, to test the top 5 sites I ran some unbiased searching at each one. I entered the same phrase on each of the 5 sites, and searched in the “all” category on each. Search result data included results from the ‘title’ or name of the torrent AND the contents within them - however, I rejected data that came back for just one of the criteria (i.e. I searched for Peter Gabriel, and threw out the results for ‘Peter Sellers’ and ‘Anna Gabriel’ - both names had to be in either the title or one of the files/phrases inside the torrent). The numbers in the chart represent the number of “live” torrents each website found - A “live” torrent must have a minimum value of one (1) or higher in the seed list - (0) ’seeds’ were not counted. This test was conducted October 2007.
Here’s how they match up:
Now, this could hardly be classified as a controlled experiment. But for these six example search strings, it does show that a couple of the websites have more results than others. Whether or not the sheer volume of ’search results’ produces more viable torrents is contentious. More torrents does not mean better torrents - it just means a greater selection.
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