Below we have compiled a list of the 10 most-visited torrent sites at the start of the new year. Only public and English language sites are included. The list is based on traffic rank reports from Compete and Alexa. In addition, we include last year’s ranking for each of the 10 sites.

Do you know a good public torrent site that’s not listed here? Feel free to plug it in a comment.

Update: 2012′s best torrent sites.

1. The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay is probably the best known BitTorrent brand on the Internet. The site was founded in 2003 and is still expanding, despite the immense legal witch hunt launched by the entertainment industries several years ago.

2. Torrentz

Torrentz has been the leading BitTorrent meta-search engine for years. A few weeks ago the site traded in its .COM domain and switched to .EU, but this didn’t affect the site’s traffic.

3. IsoHunt

Last year was a tough one for isoHunt, as it became the first search engine that had to implement a keyword filter provided by the MPAA. Despite this setback, isoHunt is still the third largest torrent site in terms of traffic. In 2011, isoHunt hopes to get rid of the filter through the Appeals Court.

4. KickassTorrents

KickassTorrents was the fastest growing newcomer of last year, and managed to continue this upward trend throughout 2010. The site released many new features and continues to innovate, still without a single banner ad on the site.

5. BTjunkie

BTjunkie had a pretty quiet year, which is usually good news for a site that operates in the BitTorrent niche. The only setback was the removal of the site’s front page from Google due to a DMCA complaint. As last year, BTjunkie settles in fifth place.

6. Demonoid.me

The impossible happened. Demonoid finished 2010 with only a minimal amount of downtime, compared to weeks or months in previous years. A few weeks ago the site announced that it would move from the familiar .COM to a .ME domain in response to the news about US domain seizures.

7. ExtraTorrent.com

ExtraTorrent is one of those robust torrent indexes that don’t make the news very often. In 2010 it continued to expand and the site gained two spots compared to last year.

8. TorrentDownloads.net

TorrentDownloads is in the same league as ExtraTorrent, a no nonsense torrent index that provides torrents to millions of users each month.

9. TorrentReactor

TorrentReactor fooled most of the tech press last year when it announced that it had bought a Russian town, one of the better PR stunts seen in 2010. On the flipside TorrentReactor seems to have lost some traffic due to a Google penalty, dropping the site to 9th place this year.

10. LimeTorrents.com

LimeTorrents is the best newcomer of 2010 in terms of traffic, which promises a lot for the new year. The site went live half a year ago and already made it into the top 10 in this short period. It’s also a bit ironic as ‘Limewire’ got shutdown a few months ago.

Honorable Mention EZTV

If there’s one site that deserves an honorable mention it’s EZTV. The leading TV-torrent release group almost made it into the top 10 on its own, but due the seasonal traffic spikes it just fell short. It has to be noted though that unlike other sites in the above list EZTV’s traffic doesn’t rely heavily on search engines such as Google or BitTorrent meta-search engines. EZTV currently has 30 million visitors a month and continues to expand.

Disclaimer: Yes, we know that Alexa isn’t perfect and that Compete has plenty of flaws, but combined both do a pretty good job at comparing sites that operate in a similar niche.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Compared to a year ago the BitTorrent landscape has changed significantly. The Pirate Bay decided to shut down its tracker last fall and a few weeks later Mininova partly shut down its website. However, with the fall of Mininova many new torrent sites emerged, with KickassTorrents being the most successful one.

It almost seems like history is repeating itself. Early 2005, just a few weeks after that period’s leading torrent site, Suprnova.org, closed its doors, Mininova was founded. In the years that followed the site grew out to become the most visited torrent site. That growth was stunted in November 2009, when a negative verdict in a court battle against the local anti-piracy outfit BREIN forced the operators of the site to remove over a million torrents.

As expected Mininova’s decision resulted in a disastrous drop in traffic, as its users spread out over other torrent sites including some promising newcomers. Today, three months after Mininova’s downfall, the site is about to disappear from the top 10 list of most visited torrent sites. The Pirate Bay is currently leading the list closely followed by the meta-search engine Torrentz and isoHunt. KickassTorrents is currently in 9th place, which is a remarkable achievement consdering the site is only a few months old.

Below you’ll find a list of the 10 most-visited torrent sites as of today. Only public and English language sites are included. The list is based on traffic rank reports from Compete, Alexa and SiteReport’s World Rank. The number of daily visitors and page views are estimates.

#1 THEPIRATEBAY.ORG - Daily Visitors: 4,600,136 - Pageviews: 26,036,770 (5.66 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #101 - Compete Rank: #724 Visit Site | Full Report
#2 TORRENTZ.COM - Daily Visitors: 2,756,280 - Pageviews: 13,781,400 (5 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #167 - Compete Rank: Currently Not Available Visit Site | Full Report
#3 ISOHUNT.COM - Daily Visitors: 2,285,811 - Pageviews: 15,497,799 (6.78 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #187 - Compete Rank: #1,187 Visit Site | Full Report
#4 BTJUNKIE.ORG - Daily Visitors: 1,363,883 - Pageviews: 6,423,889 (4.71 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #367 - Compete Rank: #2,055 Visit Site | Full Report
#5 TORRENTREACTOR.NET - Daily Visitors: 919,552 - Pageviews: 1,783,931 (1.94 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #737 - Compete Rank: #3,035 Visit Site | Full Report
#6 DEMONOID.COM - Daily Visitors: 728,513 - Pageviews: 5,383,711 (7.39 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #626 - Compete Rank: #4,640 Visit Site | Full Report
#7 TORRENTDOWNLOADS.NET - Daily Visitors: 686,219 - Pageviews: 1,331,265 (1.94 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #1,050 - Compete Rank: #3,435 Visit Site | Full Report
#8 MONOVA.ORG - Daily Visitors: 670,536 - Pageviews: 1,562,349 (2.33 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #1,004 - Compete Rank: #6,846 Visit Site | Full Report
#9 KICKASSTORRENTS.COM - Daily Visitors: 642,498 - Pageviews: 2,634,242 (4.1 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #859 - Compete Rank: #4,347 Visit Site | Full Report
#10 MININOVA.ORG - Daily Visitors: 632,519 - Pageviews: 1,872,256 (2.96 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #987 - Compete Rank: #3,257 Visit Site | Full Report

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The list is based on traffic rank reports from Compete and Alexa, backed up by visitor reports from some of the site admins. If you’re looking for high speed downloads, a free Usenet trial might be a good alternative.

Update: The best torrent sites of 2011.

1. The Pirate Bay

It has been a good year for The Pirate Bay. The number of visitors spiked, despite efforts in Denmark and Italy to block access the site. Last month, The site celebrated its 5th anniversary, just after it broke the 25 million peers mark. At any given point in time, more than 25 million peers actively trade files thought the Pirate Bay tracker.

2. Mininova

Mininova has seen a steady rise in visitors in 2008, and more than 3 billion torrents were downloaded from the site in the past 12 months. In addition to user uploaded content, the Mininova team has started to focus more on premium publishers with their content distribution platform.

3. IsoHunt

Despite being ensnared in legal proceedings with the MPAA and CRIA, isoHunt is continuing to grow. This year they partnered with the Creative Commons music distribution site Jamendo, and just like The Pirate Bay, isoHunt added SSL encryption to the site, making it impossible for your ISP or the authorities to monitor users’ activities.

4. Torrentz

Torrentz.com, one of the oldest torrent sites around, celebrated its 5th anniversary in July. The site added a “verified torrents” feature this year, and inspired many other meta-search engines to do the same. Last month a “hacker” caused some problems after it took over the torrentz domain, but luckily this issue was resolved in a few hours.

5. TorrentReactor

TorrentReactor redesigned and optimized the site throughout 2008, which resulted in a significant increase in visitors. In addition, the TorrentReactor launched TorrentPrivacy, a service that allows BitTorrent users to download torrents anonymously.

6. Demonoid

After being forced to go offline following threats from the CRIA, Demonoid returned this April after 6 months of downtime. Since then it is business as usual, and most of the members returned quickly.

7. BTjunkie

In December 2007 BTjunkie was forced to leave their ISP following a takedown notice from the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN. This year there were no troubles, and the site continues to go strong.

8. SumoTorrent

In 2007, SumoTorrent quickly settled itself among the top torrent sites, and traffic continued to increase this year. The pop-ups and redirects are new though, and don’t make it one of the most convenient sites to browse.

9. BTmon

BitTorrentMonster, BTmon for short, debuted in 10th place last year, and managed to climb a spot. Other than that, there is not much news surrounding the site.

10. TorrentPortal

Not much news about TorrentPortal this year either, but for BitTorrent sites that is usually a good thing. Traffic seems to be stable, although the site is not growing as fast as the other BitTorrent sites in this list.

Honorable mention: TorrentSpy

In 2006 TorrentSpy was more popular than any other BitTorrent site, but this changed quickly in August 2007, when a federal judge ordered TorrentSpy to log all user data. The judge ruled that TorrentSpy had to monitor its users in order to create detailed logs of their activities, and hand these over to the MPAA.

In a response to this decision – and to ensure the privacy of their users – TorrentSpy decided that it was best to block access to all users from the US. This led to a huge decrease in traffic, but still, it managed to make out top 10 list last year. March 2008 TorrentSpy owner Justin decided to shut down completely, and in May his company was ordered to pay a $110 million fine, which it will appeal.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

There are a few changes in the top 10 compared to the list of 2007′s top torrent sites. Mininova is still leading the bunch, but The Pirate Bay is now in second place, in front of isoHunt. Torrentportal and TorrentReactor traded places as well, the sites are now 7th and 9th respectively.

YouTorrent is the only newcomer, and it’s really impressive that the site made it into the top 25 only 2 months after its launch.

Top 25 torrent sites March 2008

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Here is the list, as of December 29, public BitTorrent sites only.

1. Mininova

Without a doubt the most visited BitTorrent site. In November, Mininova reached a milestone by entering the list of the 50 most visited websites on the Internet.

Alexa rank: 46

2. IsoHunt

IsoHunt continued to grow this year. In September they were forced to close their trackers to US traffic because of the issues they have with the MPAA, but this had no effect on the visitor count.

Alexa rank: 143

3. The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay has been in the news quite a bit this year and remains not only the most used BitTorrent tracker, but also one of the most visited BitTorrent sites. At the moment they are fighting with IsoHunt for the second place in this list.

Alexa rank: 147

4. Torrentz

Torrentz is the only “torrent site” in the top 10 that doesn’t host .torrent files. Several improvements and new features have been introduced over the past year such as a comment system, private bookmarks and a cleaner layout.

Alexa rank: 160

5. BTjunkie

BTjunkie was one of the fastest risers last year and continued to grow throughout 2007. Last month they were, like many others, forced to leave their ISP (LeaseWeb), but the transition to a new host went smoothly and didn’t result in any downtime.

Alexa rank: 445

6. TorrentSpy

TorrentSpy was the most popular BitTorrent site of 2006, but dropped to sixth place due to legal issues with the MPAA. To ensure the privacy of their users, TorrentSpy decided that it was best to block access to all users from the US, causing their traffic to plunge.

Alexa rank: 461

7. TorrentPortal

Not much news about TorrentPortal this year, but that probably is a good thing. Like most other sites they have grown quite a bit in 2007.

Alexa rank: 481

8. GamesTorrents

It’s quite a surprise to see GamesTorrents in the list of 10 most popular BitTorrent sites of 2007. This Spanish BitTorrent site had a huge dip in traffic earlier this year but managed to secure 8th place.

Alexa rank: 583

9. TorrentReactor

TorrentReactor.net has been around for quite a while, four years to be exact, and is still growing.

Alexa rank: 604

10. BTmon

BTmon was one of the newcomers in 2006, and it is the youngest BitTorrent site in the top 10 this year.

Alexa rank: 673

Honorable Mention: Demonoid

For being one of the most visited BitTorrent sites until they pulled the plug in November.

Top 5 Newcomers

1. SumoTorrent

SumoTorrent launched this April and quickly became one of the more popular BitTorrent sites.

Alexa rank: 1021

2. SeedPeer

SeedPeer launched in September and is formerly known as Meganova.

Alexa rank: 2924

3. Zoozle

A BitTorrent meta-search engine, launched in January.

Alexa rank: 2987

4. Extratorrent

Launched a year ago, it got a serious traffic boost earlier this year.

Alexa rank: 5304

5. BitTorrent.am

BitTorrent.am is also indexed by Torrentz.com, and was launched early 2007.

Alexa rank: 6903

Note: Alexa’s data gathering is not perfect. The exact figures may be not be completely accurate, but it is a great tool (especially the traffic rank) to compare sites within the same niche and to get a global impression of traffic shifts over time.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.