A list of Free and Legal Torrent Sites

Martin Brinkmann
Mar 4, 2007
Updated • Feb 20, 2014
File Sharing, Internet
|
6

Torrents and BitTorrent have a bad image in the press as they are usually associated with piracy and crime. What many fail to notice is that the technology itself is neutral, meaning that it can be used for good or bad, just like knifes for example.

Legitimate services use BitTorrent to distribute files and while those do not include the latest blockbusters, you will find a solid selection of media files hosted by the services that are mentioned here in this guide.

All websites that follow offer free downloads on their sites. Some may offer paid downloads in addition, but the majority of media that you can download from these sites is free of charge and legal to download.

The guide provides you with a brief description of each service so that you know what to expect from them.

Jamendo

The music website has been around for a long time. All music that you find on the site is free to listen to online and to download, provided it is for personal use.  You find almost 400,000 songs on the site and lots of albums from artists.

What I really like are the radio stations that the site offers. Not only can you use them to discover new music, you can also download any song that is playing that you like directly to your local system.

Etree

etree

A community that shares live concert recordings of artists that do not mind that this is happening. You can use the search to find a particular band. The vast archive lists relatively unknown but also popular bands. You find the Counting Crows, Dave Mathews Band or Neil Young here for instance.

All releases are downloadable with a single click from the interface. The site lists seeders and the size of the file in its listings.

Unofficial SXSW Torrents

sxsw torrents

Each year, artists play hundreds of songs on the South by Southwest festival. All music that is made available is then bundled into one or two big torrent downloads for you to downloads.

As you can see from the screenshot above, torrents are really large and included lots of audio files. The website lists torrents for all festivals back to 2005. Make sure you have a big enough hard drive if you plan to download them all to your system.

Vodo

vodo

Vodo offers independent movie downloads and adds a bit of the crowd funding platform Kickstarter to it. While you can watch movies right away, you may donate to the publisher or artists right from the website. This is not required to watch the movies online or download them via torrents though.

The selection is not that extensive as you only get access to 196 films currently at the time of writing. Still, all free so nothing to complain about here.

Clear Bits

clear bits

The Clear Bits website offers video, music, game or ebook downloads. You can use the search to find files of interested or browse the content by media type using the menu displayed in the sidebar.

Only a couple of files get released per month which is without doubt one of the things that is holding this community back.

Public Domain Torrents

public domain torrents

If you like classic movies then this site is for you. You find movies listed here from the very early days of film making including some starring popular actors such as Charlie Chaplin or Basil Rathbone.

All movies can be downloaded as torrent files for various devices, PC, iPod or PSP for example, and also bought on DVD or special mobile player versions.

Archive.org

archive torrents

The website offers more than 2 million torrent movies, books and music & audio files for free download. You can use the search to find particular files, or browse collections divided into book, movie and audio torrents. To download, locate the torrent link on the site. It features direct http downloads as well which may be faster.

Frostclick

frostclick

The website offers games, music, videos, software and other media as free legal downloads. Most download links save the torrent right to your system while others may link to another page where it can be downloaded instead.

Depending on type, you may be able to listen to or watch right on the website as well so that you do not necessarily need to download the media to your system at all. It is also great as a preview.

Game Updates

game updates

Offers free legal game downloads, PC game patches, mods and all that good stuff as torrents. If you are looking for a patch or mod for a game, you may find it here on the website.

Jam to this

jam to this

A private torrent site that you need to register to before download links become available. It offers concert recordings, more than 4000 at the time of writing.

Popular bands such as Bon Jovi, Megadeath or Jethro Tull are for instance listed here on the site.

Others

  • Linux Tracker - offers over 500 Linux related torrent downloads.
  • Mininova featured categories - Free media downloads released under Mininova's content distribution license.
  • Panda.cd - Another private site that you need to register to before you can download music offered here.
  • Vuze videos - Free videos to download to your system.
  • Bitlove - Podcasts that are seeded as torrents.
  • Tas Videos - Video game replays for you to watch.
Advertisement

Tutorials & Tips


Previous Post: «
Next Post: «

Comments

  1. LegalBT said on October 23, 2012 at 6:33 pm
    Reply

    Here at LegalBT we index many free torrent sites and we publish all the material in one place! more than 5k torrents and hundreds new every day! Feel free to check it out

  2. Brian said on July 10, 2007 at 7:03 pm
    Reply

    You can buy and sell legal torrents at http://www.PeerIt.com. PeerIt is fully integrated with PayPal and Google Checkout. Sellers post and seed their torrents. Buyers can make money by sharing there purchases.

  3. Harry Banner said on April 18, 2007 at 9:35 pm
    Reply

    Check out FreeLegalTorrents.com. It is a fantastic up and coming site, and torrent tracker for legal and 100% free torrents.

  4. Dan Masq said on April 16, 2007 at 9:29 am
    Reply

    Thank you for the links!

  5. knight said on March 5, 2007 at 3:27 pm
    Reply

    I didn’t know. Thanks for info !

  6. gnome said on March 4, 2007 at 2:59 pm
    Reply

    Brilliant stuff! Only knew of legal Torrents!

    Thanx

Leave a Reply

Check the box to consent to your data being stored in line with the guidelines set out in our privacy policy

We love comments and welcome thoughtful and civilized discussion. Rudeness and personal attacks will not be tolerated. Please stay on-topic.
Please note that your comment may not appear immediately after you post it.