Bitmagnet
Ranked 3 of 5 torrent trackers by recommenders
Self-hosted crawler that indexes BitTorrent content into your own searchable tracker, with filters for junk. Critics note it needs a Postgres database and still returns garbage results.
Self-hosted crawler that indexes BitTorrent content into your own searchable tracker, with filters for junk. Critics note it needs a Postgres database and still returns garbage results.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 90%
Recommended in 3 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 1 month
Median of the 3 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 9 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 3 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Finds more torrents than trackers
“you'll have more indexed content than any individual tracker”
Comment from 23 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: CineCLI – Browse and torrent movies directly from your terminal” “which has been great for actually finding torrents”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Still returns garbage results
“still somewhat disappointed by the garbage it reeled in”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Crawling BitTorrent DHTs for Fun and Profit [pdf]”
Other torrent trackers people recommend
The four most recommended other torrent trackers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Pirate Bay | 33 | 17 | 66% | 8 | — | — |
| Rutracker | 15 | 0 | 100% | 7 | — | Approved |
| BitmagnetThis page | 9 | 1 | 90% | 3 | 1 mo3 owners | — |
| Redacted (RED) | 6 | 2 | 75% | 2 | — | — |
| 1337x | 5 | 4 | 56% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
All 11 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“getting bitmagnet running in a container let me put both it and Deluge behind a VPN”
“many people who self-host do not seem to be aware”
“You can also just run Bitmagmet for a few weeks and then you have your own tracker.”
“Bitmagnet has some good filtering to remove garbage like that”
“why the hell does that require a postgres database instance?”
“This is a good tip, thanks. I'll probably replace my home-grown scanner for this one.”
“it's replaced my usage of regular torrent sites completely”
“still somewhat disappointed by the garbage it reeled in”
“Censorship-free magnet crawling!”
“you'll have more indexed content than any individual tracker”
“which has been great for actually finding torrents”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.