Statistics from one of the largest BitTorrent trackers on the Internet show that the number of active users varies quite a bit over time. BitTorrent users are most active on Sunday evening, European time, roughly 25% more than on Thursday morning.

At any given point in time, millions of people are sharing files via BitTorrent. The most used trackers process millions of requests per minute, each serving between 15 and 30 million people at once.

Demonii is one of these top BitTorrent trackers. The standalone tracker offers no torrents but merely coordinates communication between people who share files via sites such as The Pirate Bay.

After its launch last year, the tracker was embraced by The Pirate Bay who added it to all torrents by default. As a result the number of peers exploded, reaching 20 million at its peak last week.

Unlike most other large trackers Demonii has decided to open up its traffic statistics to the public. This allows us to see the ebb and flow of BitTorrent users from hour-to-hour and day-to-day, which offers a unique insight into the BitTorrent ecosystem.

The graph below shows the number of users that were connected to the Demonii tracker over the past week. One of the things that stands out is the variation over time.

BitTorrent users connected (CET)



Most people were connected to the tracker on Sunday afternoon U.S. time, which is Sunday evening in Europe. Last week nearly 20 million people were using the Demonii tracker during its peak. A few hours later, on Monday morning, this number had plummeted to 14 million.

Another statistic of interest is the number of connections these users make to the tracker. The graph below shows that Demonii is handling 2 million connections every minute, which is more than 3,333 connections per second.

The traffic patterns of the connections are similar to that of the number of peers, with Sunday being the busiest day.

Connections per minute



The statistics show that BitTorrent users are most active during the weekend, on Sunday in particular. The variations during the day are in line with the geographical popularity of BitTorrent, which peaks around noon in America and during the evening in Europe.

Earlier, the makers of uTorrent visualized the number of people starting up their BitTorrent clients on a typical day. The time lapse below is based on the number of check-ins and shows where the 60 million users were located.

Do you have a favorite day to use BitTorrent, or do you have your client up and running all week long? Feel free to let us know in the comments.