Top 10 Largest File-Sharing Sites
BitTorrent is no longer the dominant player when it comes to file-sharing on the Internet. The five largest English language websites dedicated to swapping files are all related to centralized file-hosting services, also known as cyberlockers. The Pirate Bay and Torrentz are the only BitTorrent sites that managed to secure a spot in the top 10.
The Internet is the largest copying machine ever invented, and if we take a look at the massive amounts of traffic file-sharing sites get, millions of people are using it to its full extent.
4shared, the largest English language file-sharing site, is serving 2.5 billion pageviews alone every month, and this number is increasing rapidly.
Below we have compiled a list of the top 10 largest (general purpose) file-sharing sites on the Internet, based on measurements by Google. What stands out immediately is that 8 of the 10 sites are related to cyberlockers, and only 2 are BitTorrent sites.
This picture is quite different from the landscape 5 years ago when BitTorrent sites dominated the file-sharing space. Early 2007 Mininova was the first BitTorrent site to earn a place among the top 100 most-visited sites on the Internet, and soon thereafter they were joined by The Pirate Bay.
In the years that followed BitTorrent sites continued to dominate, but in the background cyberlockers were catching up, and catching up fast. Where most BitTorrent sites were seeing moderate growth, several new cyberlockers saw their traffic surge. In the last year many cyberlocker sites have outgrown The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, isoHunt and other popular torrent sites.
Below is the full list of sites based on Google’s ranking. We have to note though that several site owners in this list told TorrentFreak that the monthly pageviews and unique visitors are hugely underestimated. The Pirate Bay for example claims 1,500,000,000 pageviews, which is more than double the Google estimate. Other sites report similar ‘downgrades,’ so overall the ranking would still hold.
| Ranking | Website | Category | Unique monthly visitors | Monthly pageviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| torrentfreak.com | ||||
| 1 | 4shared | Cyberlocker | 55,000,000 | 2,500,000,000 |
| 2 | Megaupload | Cyberlocker | 37,000,000 | 400,000,000 |
| 3 | Mediafire | Cyberlocker | 34,000,000 | 330,000,000 |
| 4 | Filestube | Meta-search | 34,000,000 | 280,000,000 |
| 5 | Rapidshare | Cyberlocker | 23,000,000 | 280,000,000 |
| 6 | The Pirate Bay | Torrent index | 23,000,000 | 650,000,000 |
| 7 | Fileserve | Cyberlocker | 19,000,000 | 190,000,000 |
| 8 | Hotfile | Cyberlocker | 16,000,000 | 110,000,000 |
| 9 | Torrentz.eu | Meta-search | 15,000,000 | 340,000,000 |
| 10 | Depositfiles | Cyberlocker | 14,000,000 | 110,000,000 |
