PRQ review

At a glance

PRQ is a Swedish hosting company founded in 2004 by Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij, two of the co-founders of The Pirate Bay. The Pirate Bay itself was hosted on PRQ infrastructure for years, which made PRQ one of the most-targeted hosts in the world for cross-border copyright takedown attempts.

Through multiple Swedish police raids and an enormous volume of takedown requests, PRQ remained operational and continued to host content that mainstream providers would have dropped on the first DMCA notice. That history is the reason it’s cited as a reference point for “DMCA-ignored hosting” — there are very few hosts with a comparable real-world record.

Why it gets cited

• Track record measurable in years, not marketing pages. The Pirate Bay, WikiLeaks-related infrastructure, and many other deplatformed projects have lived on PRQ.
• Swedish jurisdiction — no DMCA equivalence, strong legal pushback tradition.
• Anonymous-friendly signup despite being a registered Swedish company.
• Crypto and cash payment paths.

DMCA posture

PRQ does not act on US DMCA notices. The company’s position, restated for over 20 years, is that the DMCA has no statutory effect in Sweden and that it will evaluate complaints under Swedish law only. In practice this has meant that vast quantities of US rightsholder notices have been filed and ignored.

This is genuine DMCA-ignored, not “DMCA-resistant” with caveats. PRQ does still comply with valid Swedish court orders and removes content illegal under Swedish law (CSAM, certain hate speech, defamation against private individuals).

Anonymity

• Signup does not require government ID.
• Email + payment is sufficient.
• Bitcoin and Monero accepted; cash by mail accepted on request.
• For maximum anonymity, combine a fresh email + Monero + Tor at signup.

Pricing (May 2026, approximate)

PRQ is not the cheapest option. The premium is paid for jurisdiction, history, and posture.

Who PRQ is good for

• Operators whose threat model includes sustained US rightsholder pressure and who need a host with a track record of weathering it.
• Tor relays, leak sites, archive projects, independent journalism deplatformed by mainstream providers.
• Anyone wanting Swedish DC + anonymous signup + crypto, in one provider.

Who PRQ is not good for

• Workloads needing tier-1 support response times.
• Mainstream commercial workloads where reliability matters more than takedown resistance.
• Newcomers wanting a polished signup UX — PRQ’s site and tooling are utilitarian.

Alternatives & comparisons

• For Sweden + ISP-grade reliability (but real-name signup), see Bahnhof.
• For Iceland-based explicit free-speech host, see FlokiNET.
• For registrar-layer anonymity, see Njalla.

DMCA notes

PRQ has one of the longest public track records of declining to act on extra-jurisdictional copyright complaints. It famously hosted The Pirate Bay through years of US rightsholder pressure and has been raided by Swedish police multiple times, with services restored each time. DMCA notices have no statutory effect under Swedish law and PRQ does not act on them. Hard limits (CSAM, content illegal under Swedish law) apply.