KickassTorrents: Best Mirrors and Alternatives

KickassTorrents, often called simply KAT or Kickass or kick-ass, is one of the world’s most popular torrent meta search engines, dating to 2008 when it was launched at the domain name kickasstorrents.com. Today, the original domain name is no longer accessible, but KickassTorrents continues to live on at kickasstorrents.to and a number of alternative domains, the most important of which are introduced in this article.

History of Kickass Torrents

Like most torrent directories and search engines, KickassTorrents has always attracted unwanted attention from anti-piracy groups and law enforcement agencies. Despite complying with the DMCA, a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the original domain name of KickassTorrents was seized by the United States Department of Justice only three years after the site launched.

What followed was a series of domain changes as KickassTorrent admins desperately tried to keep the site afloat. In 2013, the site moved to Tonga domain name kickass.to; in 2014, the site moved to the Somalia domain name kickass.so; in 2015, the site moved to the Isle of Man-based domain name kickasstorrents.im; in 2016, the site was resurrected by a group of the original staff at katcr.co, and that’s where it continues to be accessible to this day.
To improve the site’s availability, KickassTorrents added an official Tor network .onion address. “Good news for those who have difficulties accessing KAT due to the site block in their country, now you can always access KAT via this address (lsuzvpko6w6hzpnn.onion) on a Tor network,” announced KAT’s Mr. White. Apart from improving the site’s availability, Kickass Tor address also allows KickassTorrents’ users to access the site anonymously.

How to Access KickassTorrents Through Tor

Tor is free software for enabling anonymous communication. It relies on a global network of nodes that directs internet traffic from one node to another to conceal a user's location and usage from anyone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis.
Tor also makes it possible for users to access anonymous hidden service reachable only via the Tor network. Such services can be recognized by their .onion domain suffix, which is exclusive to the Tor network and is not in the internet DNS root on kickass proxy sites and mirrors.
To access Kickass Tor address, you first need to download Tor Browser, which lets you use Tor on Microsoft Windows, Apple macOS, or GNU/Linux from here.

1. Tor Browser doesn’t require installation, so you can simply unpack the downloaded file to any folder you want and launch it by clicking on the application icon.
2. Once running, enter the lsuzvpko6w6hzpnn.onion address in the address bar and press enter.
3. Sometimes it takes Tor Browser a while to establish a strong connection, so it may take a few minutes for the Tor version of KickassTorrents to load.

How to Access KickassTorrents with VPN

A VPN (Virtual Private Network) extends a private network across a public network and enables users to securely send and receive data across public networks, protecting private web traffic from snooping, interference, and censorship. VPN services are often used by people who use sites like KickassTorrents to search for torrents because doing so is illegal in many countries around the world.
But even if torrents are legal in your country, you may still want to consider using a VPN service to access KickassTorrents to stay safe from the prying eyes of your internet service provider, other people who are on the same network as you, or from the government.
The good news is that there are many free VPN services to choose from, including TunnelBear, Windscribe, Hotspot Shield Free, Speedify, ProtonVPN Free, Hide.me, SurfEasy, PrivateTunnel, and others.

Access Kickass Even if Blocked

Access online the site’s blocked content with the help of a VPN app, adding at the same time extra protection of your online activity. Here are the best VPNs for speed, privacy and unblocking websites:

Each VPN service is different, so it’s not possible to provide general instructions for all, but the steps are usually very similar.

1. Register with your VPN service provider.
2. Download a client to your computer.
3. Launch the client to establish a private connection.
4. Anonymously visit any website on the internet.

Overview of Kick Ass Torrents

What sets Kick Ass Torrents apart from many other similar sites are its design and functionality. The site is organized into three main sections:

Top bar: A slim bar at the very top of the website includes a search field and five buttons: Browser, Community, Blog, FAQ, Register / Sign in.

Tag cloud: Right below the top bar is a tag cloud that makes it easy to see which torrents are trending on the site. Users can click on the tags to instantly display corresponding torrents, and they can also hide the tag cloud by clicking on a small arrow icon located at the bottom.

Torrent list: The most important part of Kick Ass Torrents are, of course, the torrents themselves, which are displayed as a list, which each torrent showing its name, size, the number of files, age, as well as seed and leech count.

No actual torrents are hosted on Kick Ass Torrents. Instead, users copy magnet links, which are essentially hyperlinks containing hash code for torrents, and paste them into their torrent clients. Virtually all modern web browsers recognize magnet links automatically, so users can simply click on a magnet link to invoke the default torrent client.