Data
Film piracy statistics (2026)
Film piracy is often talked about in the abstract. Here are the concrete numbers from the most recent industry reporting — and, because aggregate figures hide what piracy actually looks like for one film, a live measurement we ran on a single recently-released independent title.
What piracy looks like for one independent film
Industry totals are hard to feel. So we pointed our detection engine at a single independent film shortly after its release — one modestly-budgeted title, not a franchise. Within weeks, and without naming it here, this is what we found:
live copies found across the web
different pirate sites hosting it
people downloading it via torrents at one moment
That ~4,800 figure is a live torrent-swarm count — real people mid-download at the moment we measured, on the torrents alone. It doesn't include the streaming-site viewers, which are far harder to count. For a film relying on rentals and VOD sales in its opening window, that's a direct hit to the numbers that decide whether it recoups.
The takeaways for independent filmmakers
- Streaming, not torrents, is the main channel. Most modern film piracy is illegal streaming sites — which are also the hardest for a filmmaker to find and remove without tooling.
- The release window is the danger zone. Copies appear fast and do the most damage exactly when your legitimate sales matter most.
- Doing nothing is the default — and it's costly. Because indies rarely have anti-piracy budgets, copies usually stay up unchallenged. They don't have to.
See the numbers for your film
Takedown Guard scans for pirated copies of your film, captures evidence, and prepares the takedown notices — so you can see exactly what's out there and remove it. Free while we onboard early filmmakers directly.
Frequently asked questions
› How big is film piracy in 2026?
Piracy remains enormous. Across all media, MUSO recorded roughly 216 billion visits to piracy sites in its most recent annual report, with TV and film the largest categories. Illegal streaming — not torrents — now drives the majority of that traffic, and piracy has been climbing again as streaming prices rise and catalogues fragment across services.
› How much money does movie piracy cost?
Estimates vary by methodology, but studies put annual losses to the global movie industry in the tens of billions of dollars — commonly cited ranges run from roughly $40 billion to $97 billion, and one report estimated pirated-video sites cost streaming services about $30 billion a year in the US alone.
› Does piracy really affect small independent films?
Yes — arguably more, proportionally. A studio tentpole loses a slice of a huge audience; an independent film can have a meaningful share of its entire potential audience siphoned off by free copies during the exact release window when every rental and purchase counts. Because indies rarely have anti-piracy budgets, those copies often stay up unchallenged.
› What can an independent filmmaker actually do about it?
You can send DMCA and EU takedown notices to hosts, ask Google to delist infringing URLs, and monitor for re-uploads. The practical challenge is doing it consistently at scale. Tools like Takedown Guard automate the detection, evidence capture, and notice generation so a solo filmmaker can keep up. See our step-by-step guide to removing your movie from pirate sites.
Sources & methodology
Aggregate figures are drawn from published industry reporting, linked inline above (MUSO 2024 Piracy Trends; reporting via TheWrap; industry estimates compiled by DataProt). Ranges reflect differing methodologies between studies. The single-film measurement is our own: live detection across torrent, streaming and download sources, with the swarm count taken from public BitTorrent tracker data at the time of measurement. The film is not named to avoid drawing further attention to the infringing copies.
Related: How to remove your movie from pirate sites · The MUSO alternative for indie filmmakers →