Where to Find Active BitTorrent Tracker Lists

Introduction

A BitTorrent tracker is a crucial piece of infrastructure that coordinates peers in the swarm. Without one, clients cannot discover each other and the torrent effectively becomes unreachable. While modern BitTorrent clients support peer discovery through DHT, PEX, and magnet links, having a healthy set of working trackers in your torrent file or client configuration significantly improves download speeds and reliability.

The challenge is that public trackers come and go — some disappear, others change addresses, and new ones emerge. Keeping your tracker list up to date is an ongoing task. Fortunately, several community-maintained resources do this work for you. This article surveys the most reliable sources for finding active public BitTorrent tracker lists.

ngosang/trackerslist

• Repository: github.com/ngosang/trackerslist
• Stars: 54k+ ⭐
• Last updated: Daily

The most popular public tracker list on the internet. Maintained by Diego Heras (ngosang), this GitHub repository is updated daily by an automated bot that tests each tracker and sorts them by popularity and latency. It is the go-to source for anyone who needs a curated list of working public trackers.

The repository provides several distinct lists:

The bot automatically removes trackers that point to the same domain or IP address, and it maintains a blacklist of known unreliable entries. Each list is also available through CDN mirrors (jsDelivr and GitHub Pages), making them easy to consume programmatically.

How to Use ngosang/trackerslist

You can add the trackers to your torrent client manually, or use one of the many community scripts that automate the process. Popular options include:

• bittorrent-tracker-editor — adds trackers to .torrent files
• deluge-default-trackers — Deluge plugin
• transmission-trackers — Python script for Transmission
• qbittorrent bash script — adds trackers to qBittorrent

You can also fetch the lists directly from the raw GitHub URLs or the CDN mirrors and incorporate them into your own tooling.

newTrackon

• Website: https://newtrackon.com
• Source: github.com/CorralPeltzer/newTrackon

newTrackon is a meta-tracker service that continuously monitors the uptime of public BitTorrent trackers. It probes each tracker every few minutes and publishes the results, including an uptime percentage based on the last 1000 checks. Unlike ngosang's list, which is a static snapshot, newTrackon provides a live view of tracker health.

Key features that make newTrackon particularly useful for tracker list curation:

• Real-time monitoring — each tracker is probed at regular intervals, so you can see not just whether a tracker is working now, but how reliable it has been over time.
• Uptime filtering — the /list page provides a client-ready list of all trackers with over 95% uptime.
• Community submissions — anyone can submit a tracker URL for inclusion. The service validates the submission with a live probe before adding it to the list.
• Raw data endpoint — the /raw page exposes the latest connection attempt result for every tracked tracker, useful for debugging and automation.

For a practical walkthrough on submitting your own tracker to newTrackon, including how to handle the one-tracker-per-IP constraint and configure BEP34 DNS records, see our dedicated guide: Submitting Trackers to newTrackon.

XIU2/TrackersListCollection

• Website: https://trackerslist.com
• Repository: github.com/XIU2/TrackersListCollection
• Stars: 3k+ ⭐
• Last updated: Daily

Another well-maintained and frequently updated tracker list. The project aggregates trackers from multiple upstream sources — including ngosang/trackerslist, newTrackon, and several others — into a single curated collection. It is a good alternative if you want a broader set of trackers without having to combine lists yourself.

The available lists include:

Other Community Sources

Torrust Tracker Discussion

• Discussion: torrust/torrust-tracker#650

The Torrust project maintains a community discussion on GitHub where tracker operators and users share working public trackers. This is a good place to find new trackers that may not yet appear in the larger automated lists, as well as to discuss tracker reliability and configuration with other community members.

Built-in Tracker Lists in Torrent Clients

Most modern BitTorrent clients include a default list of public trackers that they add to torrents automatically. These lists are maintained by the client developers and are often a good starting point:

• qBittorrent — includes an option to automatically add trackers from ngosang's list to new torrents.
• Transmission — ships with a built-in list of public trackers in its source code.
• Deluge — supports tracker lists via plugins like deluge-default-trackers.
• BiglyBT — includes support for I2P and other alternative network trackers.

How to Choose a Tracker List

With multiple sources available, here are some factors to consider when deciding which tracker list to use:

For most users, ngosang/trackerslist is the best choice: it is well maintained, offers per-protocol lists, and provides IP-based alternatives for environments with DNS problems. Use newTrackon when you care about long-term uptime data or want to verify the reliability of a specific tracker before adding it to your configuration. XIU2/TrackersListCollection is a convenient option if you want a broader set of trackers aggregated from multiple sources with minimal effort.

Automating Tracker Updates

If you run a torrent client on a server (for example, a seedbox or a home NAS), you can automate the process of keeping your tracker list fresh. A typical approach:

1. Set up a cron job or systemd timer to download the latest list daily.
2. Parse the list and update your client's tracker configuration.
3. Use one of the community scripts linked above for your specific client.

If you run a Torrust Tracker, you can enable both UDP and HTTP/S protocols simultaneously by adding multiple server blocks in the configuration file:

[[udp_trackers]]
bind_address = "0.0.0.0:6969"

[[http_trackers]]
bind_address = "0.0.0.0:7070"

Each protocol gets its own announce URL (for example udp://your-server:6969/announce and https://your-server:7070/announce). You can add both to your torrent files or client configuration. The tracker also supports an external_ip config option: when a peer announces from the same machine (127.0.0.1), the tracker replaces their loopback address with this public IP so other peers in the swarm can reach them.

Conclusion

Keeping your tracker list up to date is essential for a healthy BitTorrent experience. Whether you use ngosang's comprehensive daily-updated lists, newTrackon's live uptime monitoring, or a combination of both, these community resources save you from the tedious task of manually testing and updating trackers.

The ecosystem around public tracker lists is active and well maintained. Bookmark these sources, set up automation if you run a server, and check back periodically — the list of working trackers changes every day.