TorrentFreak

• Ernesto
• November 1, 2009
• 181
• demonoid alternative,
  demonoid maintenance
• Print

When Demonoid went dark two months ago, many of its users hoped the site would return quickly. Unfortunately this did not happen, and the regulars at one of the largest BitTorrent trackers on the Internet had to find a new hideout. But where should they go? Can anything compare to Demonoid?

Early September we reported that Demonoid would go down for possibly-extended downtime due to some hardware problems. Two months later the site is still down and nobody seems to know how long the ‘maintenance’ will last. So where should Demonoid users go to now?

When writing this article we were faced with a problem. Technically there isn’t really an alternative to Demonoid, as the site acted both as a private and public tracker with a library of hundreds of thousands of user uploaded torrent files. We have to admit that the sites listed here don’t quite compare to the ‘late’ Demonoid, but when combined they go someway to filling the gap for those struggling for ideas.

We previously listed 25 Pirate Bay alternatives. Because many of these could also serve as Demonoid replacements we decided not to include any duplicates here, hence the absence of sites such as Mininova, isoHunt and Torrentz. Here are some of the options that Demonoid users have while the site is down. If you’re looking for high speed downloads you could also consider to try Usenet instead (our Usenet guide).

Join another private tracker

The Internet is populated with thousands of smaller BitTorrent trackers that require users to signup, mostly through an invite system like Demonoid’s. Luckily for those new to the private tracker phenomenon, there are always a few dozen sites that allow newcomers to join without being invited. We’ve listed 5 of these sites below, more are available at Btracs.

1. TorrentZilla

2. TorrentsForAll

3. All4Nothin

4. Midnight-Torrents

5. ThePeerHub

Switch to Public BitTorrent Indexers and Meta-Search Engines

One of the downsides of most (smaller) private trackers is that they don’t offer as many torrents as Demonoid did. Those looking for more obscure or niche content are often better off at one of the public torrent indexes or meta-search engines. We’ve listed 5 lesser known torrent sites below. Although these are perfectly suited to find the latest torrents, we have to admit that their existence relies on other torrent sites like The Pirate Bay and Mininova (where they get torrents from), and public trackers such as OpenBitTorrent and PublicBT.

6. KickassTorrents

7. yourBitTorrent

8. TorrentDownloads

9. AliveTorrents

10. RSSTorrents

We understand that this list isn’t complete, we could have mentioned isoHunt’s new project Hexagon and there are many other torrent sites we could have included, but we have a secret weapon – the readers of TorrentFreak – who can list alternative sites by the dozen.

So, in the spirit of sharing, if you know a public or private site which is open for signups that is not already listed here or in our Pirate Bay alternative article, we encourage you to list it in the comment section below.

Early September we reported that Demonoid would go down for possibly-extended downtime due to some hardware problems. Two months later the site is still down and nobody seems to know...