Online piracy is hydra-headed -- shut down one domain, and several alternatives emerge to replace it. For years, viewers have relied on this logic to brush off copyright crackdowns as minor disruptions, believing that their favorite anime streaming portals won’t stay missing for long.
While that pattern held true for years, 2026 saw the smooth-sailing ecosystem get rocked as rights holders brought down the hammer against some of the largest illegal anime streaming websites across the globe.
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9. HiAnime
HiAnime held the distinction of being the largest anime piracy website, attracting over 300 million visitors monthly during its peak. Following its rebrand from Aniwatch in 2024, the site had long been in the crosshairs of copyright holders, even repeatedly making it to the list of the United States Trade Representative’s (USTR) annual Notorious Markets list.
HiAnime first went dark earlier this year in March. While the site bid farewell to its users in a message displayed to viewers, their offic…
8. AnimeKai
Like HiAnime, AnimeKai was a popular destination for viewers. However, it never attained the same levels of notoriety as the former, despite boasting an extensive library and massive user base.
AnimeKai announced its shutdown in early May, with the site’s operators attributing the closure to their unnamed data center catching fire. This resulted in the site’s developer abandoning the project and AnimeKai subsequently going dark.
While the claims of the fire have not been fully substantiated, it is…
7. Cineby
Cineby is not an anime-focused piracy website like the previous two entries. However, the platform did host numerous anime series, both new and old, allowing its massive user base to stream the titles illegally. In the month of July alone, Cineby attracted around 160 million views, making it one of the largest piracy websites on the internet.
While Cineby had been the recipient of multiple legal notices from copyright holders, including an injunction from the Delhi High Court in July, the platfor…
6. 9anime
9anime was one of the go-to illegal anime streaming sites online before it got rebranded to Aniwave in 2023. However, that didn’t stop multiple mirror sites of the previous domain from popping up.
Around April 2026, 9anime’s mirror also went dark, causing significant panic and confusion among users who frequented them. While the reason is still not confirmed, it is believed that the site's backend infrastructure -- including hosting on services like Megacloud, which is often shared across piracy…
5. AniWatch
The original Aniwatch website was a passion project that was completely ad-free and featured high-bitrate video encodes. Operating from 2018 to 2021, the site grew so big that it became impossible for the admins to keep up with the costs of running the backend and servers, eventually leading to its closure.
Later, in 2023, Zoro.to rebranded itself to Aniwatch.to, taking up the brand that was already popular among users. During this period, AniWatch became a household name for piracy connoisseurs,…
3. Anime Play
Unlike traditional online streaming sites that run on browsers, Anime Play was a mobile-first Android app that targeted Southeast Asian audiences, primarily in Indonesia.
The anime streaming app, which launched in 2020, amassed over five million registered users, establishing itself as one of the most widely used pirate streaming applications across the Asia-Pacific region.
However, Anime Play’s reign came to an end in March 2026, when the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) and the Mo…
2. AniGo
While AniGo was not as big as the other entries in this list, it still commanded respectable traffic of 1.5 million users a month this year. The site gained popularity once the heavyweights in the anime piracy ecosystem started being hunted down one by one.
However, AniGo itself eventually came under the crosshairs of copyright holders, which resulted in its shutdown. It went offline in May, with site administrators initially claiming that the servers had caught fire, just like AnimeKai’s.
It was…
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