KickassTorrents (also known as KAT) was a peer-to-peer file-sharing site that hosted a torrent file directory and magnet link index for the BitTorrent protocol. KAT was established in 2008, and by November 2014, it had surpassed The Pirate Bay as the most popular BitTorrent tracker in the world, according to data from Alexa. After the United States government took control of the KAT domain on July 20, 2016, the website was taken down. At the same time as the site itself was taken down, its proxy servers were also disabled.
Until its founder Artem Vaulin was arrested & charged with various criminal violations by the Department Of Justice in 2016, the Kickass torrents site was one of the most well-known torrenting sites online. The first Kickass Torrents (KAT) site was taken down soon after. Kickass Torrents’ original website displayed a foreboding message for quite some time afterward.
When did you last use Kickass Torrents?
Despite the fact that the original Kickkasstorrents site was taken down years ago, a replica is still active. There are no discernible differences between this and the classic Kickass Torrents other than the name.
Kickass Torrents Mirror Site
Is the new KickassTorrents website safe to utilize for all your torrenting needs? We are skeptical. Despite its frequent inclusion on “best of” lists, this torrent site is not one we recommend. Something about this page makes what should be a simple download process more complicated and time-consuming.
In order to use the latest version of KAT and access its trackers, for instance, you will need to download a browser extension. This add-on appears to be a PDF converter given its name. We didn’t feel comfortable installing it because of security and privacy worries.
Even though a dependable version of the Kickass torrent is no longer available, that doesn’t mean you can’t torrent. Several excellent and currently functional KAT alternatives exist. We’ve done the legwork for you and found the most reliable alternatives to Kickass Torrents.
Top Current Alternatives to Kickass Torrents
Taking down Kickass Torrents is a reasonable step toward reducing the number of copyright infringements that are possible via torrenting. However, torrent users have numerous other options besides KAT.
Our team has compiled a list of the top 10 torrenting sites currently available on the web. Now that Kickass Torrents has been taken down, each of these sites is an excellent replacement.
- The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay is a torrenting industry titan, drawing in tens of millions of users it does every month with its vast collection of content, lightning-quick download speeds, and user-friendly design.
The service is also notable for its unusual security measures; its committed user base will alert you if a given torrent poses any sort of threat. In addition, graphic tags indicate if a given torrent is safe to download or not.
As an alternative to Kickass Torrents, The Pirate Bay is a strong contender. In many respects, it may even be superior. The Pirate Bay and its mirror sites have been blocked in various countries, prompting users to seek out substitutes. Using a virtual private network (VPN), you can bypass your country’s censorship of The Pirate Bay by temporarily switching your IP address.
- RARBG
Another major player in the torrenting scene is RARBG. Since its launch in 2008, this website has amassed an impressive monthly visitor count of 40,000,000.
The RARBG interface may be snappier than that of The Pirate Bay, and the site itself is certainly less attractive, but it makes up for this by allowing for greater customization of your browsing experience. By navigating RARBG, you may check out the most popular torrents in a variety of categories and read up on the latest developments involving well-known digital products.
However, RARBG’s intrusive advertising is a major drawback. To many, this is just enough to continue using The Pirate Bay for their regular torrenting needs.
- 1337X
There are much larger file-sharing sites than 1337X, such as The Pirate Bay and RARBG. Nonetheless, it still attracts about 50 million unique visitors every month thanks to its emphasis on entertainment media.
Numerous people have chosen 1337X as their go-to source for this type of content because of the site’s convenient organization of content by industry accolade. Also, there are no annoying adverts on the site, and the download speed is satisfactory at 3 to 4 MB/s.
Video game fans that subscribe to 1337X may be frustrated by the service’s limited selection of titles. Still, 1337X is a solid option when torrenting.
- Torrentz2
The specialized market that Torrentz2 serves is even smaller than that of 1337x, as it only provides music torrents. Therefore, it has the greatest music collection of every torrenting site, despite the fact that many of its downloads presumably contain copyrighted material and thus are illegal.
Unfortunately, Torrentz2 has a lot of annoying ads. Additionally, download speeds are subpar, and there are few navigational choices for finding desired tracks. Torrentz2 is used when other sources fail to provide a desired album or single.
- YTS
If you want to download movies via torrent, YTS is the greatest site out there. YTS is the best movie torrent site since it consistently receives over 75 million monthly visitors, has download speeds of 3-4 MB/s, and has a well-designed interface. As stunning as the user interface of YTS is, what really sets it apart is the depth and breadth of its library. There are millions of torrents available, including many classic movies that are no longer in production. The torrents on this site are compressed so that users with slower connections can still download them.
However, as with the other sites on this list, there are numerous unauthorized downloads of mainstream movies available.
Conclusion
Although Kickasstorrent was shut down several years ago, this did not spell the end of torrenting. There are several viable alternatives to Kickass Torrents that do the same job. Incredibly large audiences are still accessing content digitally via these channels.
