The Top 35 Torrent Sites of 2007

1. Torrentscan.com (a "meta-search" engine, which is a search engine that searches other search engines)

2. LegalTorrents.com (As the name implies, this is a database of public-domain content. Thanks to Anand S. for this URL.)

3. Snarf It! (born from previous Suprnova influences)

4. Isohunt.com
July, 2007: Isohunt has over 450,000 torrents in their database. Also noteworthy: any Isohunt torrent listed as "ISOhunt release" means that it is a file verified by the administrators...a nice feature to help you locate authentic torrents and not fake files. On a sad note: Isohunt is being sued by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) for copyright infringement. If you want to use this tremendous Canadian site, you better use it while you can.
January 22, 2007: Although Isohunt was suddenly shut down by its original ISP before the weekend, the administrators have relaunched the service on a new ISP with new hardware. There are still problems, but Isohunt does live for the time being. The MPAA lawsuit is slated for a March summary judgment, so make sure you use Isohunt now, while you still can.

5. Mininova.org has 190,000 torrents indexed as of April, 2007. Mininova is the successor to Suprnova, one of the original big torrent databases of the Web.

6. Demonoid (a personal favorite of many About.com readers, Demonoid is also a major tracker database that supports thousands of swarms around the globe. Even better, the Demonoid community polices itself by monitoring how much each member actually shares files. ("Leeches" are not tolerated at Demonoid). Note: because new memberships at Demonoid are scarce, you will need to be patient and committed if you wish to join.)

7. 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. Read the details on their home page.)

8. Torrentz.com (special thanks to reader, Jonathan R., for this link)

9. Torrents.to

10. Torrentspy.com offers over 420,000 torrents in its database, the largest torrent index that is readily available to the public. Enjoy it while you can.

11. Torrentmatrix.com

12. Torrentportal.com

13. BTjunkie

14. TorrentTyphoon.com (a unique bittorrent meta-search engine that searches several of the most popular sites. Unfortunately, it does not do a good job categorizing the torrent files themselves)

15. 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.

16. The Pirate Bay (Pirate Bay, by readership size, is the most popular torrent search site today. Pirate Bay has an immense database of 600,000+ torrents, the largest database at this time.)
(May 31, 2006: The Pirate Bay has been shut down by Swedish authorities. Details are available on the Pirate Bay home page.)
(June 2006: The Pirate Bay has restarted operations, now that the police have duplicated the PB hard drives for forensic purposes. Enjoy this database while it is still around, folks!)

17. Scrapetorrent.com is another torrent meta-search engine that is gaining popularity.

18. ByTorrents Meta Search

19. Thinktorrent.com

20. FileList.org

21. Yotoshi.com

22. TopTorrents (has been down intermittently the last few weeks for unknown reasons.)

23. Meganova.org

24. FileMP3.org

25. FullDLS.com

26. TorrentBytes.net

27. Torrent-damage.net

28. Torrentlocomotive

29. BiteNova (formerly known as “Bi-Torrents”, BiteNova is a free Torrent site with a spartan look and fast searching format.)

30. bittorrent.com (the official Torrent website by Bram Cohen, the designer of the Python BitTorrent format.)

31. Fenopy (formerly Bitoogle.com) (the 'original' bittorrent search engine, which has now morphed into a metasearch engine. The results from your Bitoogle searches will point to various other torrent search sites. This site has been redirected recently.)

32. BTbot.com (this site has been intimidated into listing fewer and fewer current torrents. The administrator was likely spooked by the recent wave of lawsuits against Isohunt and Pirate Bay)

33. Special mention: Torrents.co.uk (This British site has been slow to load lately)

34. Special mention: LokiTorrent.com (In a precedent-setting MPAA civil law suit, Loki has been shut down by court order as of Feb 10, 2005. To add insult to injury, the MPAA has left a trashy saber-rattling message at the lokitorrent home page in an attempt to intimidate other P2P users. P2P users everywhere are mourning the loss of this excellent service, and the MPAA is estranging even more Internet users with its heavy-handed campaign.)

35. Special mention: Commonbits.com (This new beta search site is dedicated to media on progressive political content: audio, video, photos, reports, transcripts and other files. This is a place for activists to share their message, and for people to learn about other political choices.)