February 28, 2009 by sharky
With all the available choices for private trackers these days, it’s easy to let a good thing slip you by. Just about every torrent board has a forum thread somewhere for discussion pertaining to "The most underrated private trackers". We sifted through the comments in each, and rolled it up into one article. IPTorrents, who unsurprisingly wears the crown as the most offered torrent invite, has also been voted the most underrated tracker - we can see why.
IPTorrents.com (0Day / General)
Why IPT is underrated: Huge number of active torrents (37,000+); tons of ‘packs’ for movies, music, adult, TV; freeleech torrents; 100K+ members; custom torrents; bonus system; pretimes are very good for a non-scene tracker (10 - 30 minutes and up).
IPTorrents is just loaded with leechers, so keeping a good ratio shouldn’t be a problem - seeding on a home PC works well (seedbox not needed). Download speeds vary (but overall are fairly good), though it would seem that seedbox owners here are in the vast minority. We’re surprised to see freeleech torrents - this is usually rare for a 0day tracker. Below is a look at the most popular torrents, as arranged by seeds & leechers. Just look at the number of ‘Snatches’:
| Seeders (High to Low) | Leechers (High to Low) |
 |
 |
IPTorrents - At A Glance…
- Open Registration? No - IPT is currently ‘invite only’ - open signup is now closed.
- # of Torrents: 37,481
- # of Members: unknown (100,000+ est.)
- Oldest Active Torrent: 2006-05-28
- Freeleech Torrents? Yes - ~1,600 torrents (scattered randomly, mostly ‘packs’).
- Seedbox Tested? Yes (TFlux; Transmission v1.20 & 1.22).
- Home ISP Tested? Yes (uTorrent 1.8.2) - DL Speeds: 200 kB/s to 600 kB/s (avg). Azureus/Vuze is not recommended (and will soon be banned on IPT).
- Bonus System: Yes - Awarded accordingly for 100% seeding (not partial) per torrent. Points can be used to purchase Upload GBs (~100 points per 1 GB) and invites (3 for 600 points).
- Rep System: Odd for a tracker, there’s a rep system in place (for forum posts and select torrent uploads).
- Ratio Requirement: Strict (1.05) - "Every user has obligation to keep his ratio any time above 1.05. Once your ratio is below 1.0 you will receive a warning from the system."
- User Classes: Just two main classes (User and Power User). PU = Must have been a member for at least 4 weeks, have uploaded at least 50GB and have a ratio at or above 1.05.
- Invites: IPTorrents has the most relaxed invite-system that I’ve ever come across - it’s no wonder where all the invites come from. Power Users are awarded invites every 10 days, for:
| Invites | Stats |
| 1 | Downloaded 1-4 GB and the ratio is greater than .90 |
| 2 | Downloaded 4-7 GB and the ratio is greater than .95 |
| 3 | Downloaded 7-10 GB and the ratio is greater than 1.00 |
| 4 | Downloaded greater than 10 GB, ratio is greater than 1.05 |
Some have suggested that IPT steals torrents from other 0day and specialized trackers. We couldn’t agree more. There are torrents from HDBits.org (DON, CtrlHD, ESiR), TorrentLeech (D-ZON3, FLAWL3SS, DEViSE) - among others. Regardless, IPT is an underrated tracker for both beginners and pros alike.
HD-Torrents.org (HD)
Why HD-Torrents is underrated: Has popular HD torrents from HD-encoders including CtrlHD, ESiR, DON, EuReKA; loads of activity (leechers) on the torrents; seed-bonus system; mouseover mini-posters for movie releases; some nice HD packs & boxsets; documentaries/nature content; extended info on torrent ‘details’ pages; freeleech torrents (as represented by a gold coin).
User Classes: Three normal classes: Members; HD Maniac; HD Monster. ‘Tracker Stats’ are only available to "HD Monster" class (total upload over 250GB and ratio above 2.0).
Suggestions to HDT Improvement: HDT needs to make the torrent browsing similar to most trackers (with a list of clickable categories) instead of a dropdown list. Also - their "Rules/FAQ" needs a ton of work.
Pretome.net (0day / General)
PreToMe.net (Pre-To-Me) is a fast-growing tracker that was born from humble beginnings as a spinoff site from FunFile.org back in May, 2008. Both sites appear eerily similar (even today). If donations were the reason for the split, we don’t see it - both sites herd their members towards VIP status (which does little more than exonerate you from negative repercussions due to Hit & Runs). VIP means you can do no wrong - be a leecher, H&R, save bandwidth. Apparently the tiff was about where the money went, not how the monies were being directed, as shown in the two "Donate" screenshots from both trackers:
Nonetheless, PreToMe is quite underrated; if you can get past the donations part. They have double the number of active torrents compared to FunFile (8,189, and 16,791 for PreToMe) - all in all, a very good low-level tracker with decent pretimes and tons of content.
Why PTM is underrated: Has 2 easy-to-use RSS feeds (regular and direct download); there’s the option to filter torrents by "Scene only" releases (currently they list 7,098 scene releases); great homepage with additional features (including detailed stats and shoutbox); bonus-system in place (called MyCredits) that can be used to purchase just about anything:
PreToMe signups (key courtesy of FileNetworks):
http://www.pretome.net/signup.php?key=1f01845ac1777a432ff4197eeafd0812
TVTorrents.com (TV)
Why TVT is underrated: Good pretimes (30 minutes on avg. and up); loads of complete series’ and season packs for just about every show listed; huge selection of HD torrents for almost everything; content is heavily focused on categorization of shows (not individual torrents); everything is well-seeded; no "real" global ratio (although you’ll need to keep at least 1:1 overall); swarmspeed announced for each torrent; no userclasses; amazing DL speeds for popular content:
Demonoid.com (General)
- — Sheer content: Demonoid lists 232,000 torrents (193,000 of which are tracked internally).
- — Find other tracker invites: Has a very popular "invite offers" forum in the ‘General’ section. To view this thread, you’ll need to have previously registered separately to the "Demonoid Fora".
- — No Bonus System (everything is freeleech); you don’t need to keep a good ratio. One reader wrote: "If they turned on ratio watching, they would lose 90% of their users."
Need a Demonoid invite code? Try one of these codes on their signup page:
- l1xs455488bg1igemorttyq4h6qv8yro7esbcnlhndub8
- uqrsr5ay2nitgg012lasd3szw8jn1kczhnhm0
- c2siwgy7q8dpq27v0od0c4cm5i7rcoa2xw2509r
- 1q1ts4dwfjq29be3hnt3vv23kvga79lbcobdfs97rfh
- ehpbxdj12nlxm8kzhscxinta77icz5alquh9o46apq1
- x1nt40tw41quwzw6su9q9522xp231rlcmfr1bg72d8
- kbq81mc0n1d0d0u45hoxlydoihmlx3idng
- t2a5cm9ywpzlqb9lxatsmaydms4ss6wsspjo
- 5qpd0tnkmpmqownxcz0yr50kgxr0xnce2h
- ulwzx9g6mzxp2deuyg7cht9p9xhbafisl1hzlnjvzffi2
- h293e9be2k5t9qjm87t2f2l02r55uswawl7p1al91w9h
- tlf6zdu96o1ckstebia71i2km01a929otm
- canlvo6d5ycqvnzrcd76aro2rzhx28bbift1kvv4
- lngdvsjk0deo61c1nt9j9ba54ktr9ehj
- fg5g62xwetmn8anonz29ttxbp5zpbzlomvogqsfccg
- 77c0ubvhzn6q2xpdpzcyrl59mqle8gnjdtpxa
- zo0×8oou7ieczkzmn56hfsxa0s86uu0gh1lilrjkoros
- a7a98c1nge1u9zoqlz6qq24p374lb2wr0pem
- j4rkt7lxyp4qhbj2kl3slj1gktp83vbjlfspwmsbxso
- 1lsezfii5rh2lx8z4hbxmvakittklg03gkjl6
- po3c3sz7fpxub5prh2f6fxl8ow7fpmlgt73
- iobfrfjc5by4b281djvz53f43s2hbdrawd0rjs
TorrentBits.ro (General)
Another tracker that’s highly underrated is TorrentBits.ro. With nearly 13,000 active torrents, TBS is a hidden gem. Signups are currently open, and everything is currently set to freeleech. TBS is growing rapidly, as there’s currently over 57,000 members.
Why TorrentBits is underrated:
- — Most torrents are well-seeded, guaranteeing good download speeds (I can easily max out my home Internet connection).
- — Content consists of both scene and non-scene releases.
- — Above-average pretimes: Between 3 minutes and a couple of hours for most stuff. Pretimes are announced for scene release torrents.
- — Both English and Romanian releases.
- — Tons of Hi-Def content.
- — Customizable RSS feeds per category, with direct download RSS links.
Zamunda.net & Torrents.ru (General)
Zamunda.net and Torrents.ru are not exactly underrated in Russia & Bulgaria, but they’re often overlooked by the English torrent community. Both trackers are akin to Demonoid - huge userbases and tons of torrents. Of the two, Zamunda is a little easier to navigate (since it has an ‘English browse’ option) - whereas Torrents.ru is forum-based (by default) with very little English on the site. In any event, both trackers offer releases that can’t be found anywhere else.
Zamunda — 62,000 torrents; 700,000 members. Specialties: Mobile/GSM - 677 torrents; HD - 2,000 torrents; Games (PC and console) - 4,000; Adult - 5,200; Applications - 4,500. Regularly has open signups - http://zamunda.net/signup.php.
Torrents.ru — Unknown # of torrents (millions?); 3,493,617 members. Has just about every category of torrent. Specialties: Navigation/maps; mobile phones, PDAs, iPhones & iPod (Touch) software; Mac-related torrents; graphics software & design (clipart, fonts, 3D models); automotive torrents & dox (manuals, repair & maintenance); audiobooks & eBooks. TIP: Use their tracker link - http://torrents.ru/forum/tracker.php to browse the torrents instead of the forums. Categories on the tracker coincide precisely with the layout of the forum - to get an idea of what each category is, use Google’s translate service (click here) on the forum.
TorrentBytes.net (General / Scene)
Don’t be fooled by TorrentBytes‘ low torrent count of just 3,250 - a lot of new content gets added (~50 new torrents per day). TBy adds approximately 1,500 new torrents each month (older content/unseeded torrents get removed). Considered a ’scene tracker’, TBy incorporates a TTL (time to live) function on the site, so torrents older than 1008 hours (or 42 days) are, by and large, deleted (hence the low number of torrents on the tracker). For a low-level tracker, pretimes are relatively good (from minutes to hours).
If you can navigate through their notoriously difficult signup page (you need to first read/click on the FAQ & Rules, and be sure to use both lower & uppercase letters & numerals for a username), you’ll find TorrentBytes is a worthy tracker on all levels.
Honorable Mention: PTFiles v2 (General)
PTFiles.org (the old Phoenix-Torrents) has recently been relaunched as PTF v2.0 a short time ago, and we can only foresee good things happening at this tracker. There’s often unannounced 24 hour freeleeches, and a ‘crazyhour’ feature whereby all torrents are freeleech (and 3x upload) for a predetermined upcoming hour each day. Currently there are 1,625 active torrents, and all new members receive a nice upload buffer of 7.0 GBs (signups are currently open). Content is mixed between non-scene and scene-only torrents (400) which can be easily filtered on the browse page.
Special Signup URL: http://ptfiles.org/register.php?referrer=filesharefreak
Why PTFiles is underrated:
- — New accounts come with 3 freeleech slots (where you can select certain torrents to become freeleech or double-upload for two weeks).
- — Torrents can be downloaded at .torrent, .zip or .txt files.
- — There’s a Karma points system, rep points and IRC idle bonus.
- — Has a shoutbox on the main homepage.
- — Customizable torrent browse page (sidebars, categories, menus).
- — Has a cool ‘Genres’ popup window, handy for selecting subcategories.
- — Has ‘Scene Info’ links on many of the torrents (ZeroSec, ScnSrc and pre.scnsrc.net).
- — There’s an option to post anonymously on the torrent comments.
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