Is uptodown.com legit or a scam?
Established Spanish APK download platform (founded 2002) with valid business registration, clean antivirus scans, and high traffic ranking — legitimate but users should verify individual downloads.
Analysis Summary
No threats detected
All checks passed. This site appears legitimate — but always stay alert for phishing even on trusted domains.
Website Preview
Automated page render — captured in a safe sandbox. What an ordinary visitor would see when loading the site. See full visual analysis →
MT Intelligence
Uptodown operates as a long-established file-hosting service registered in Spain over 23 years ago, with active business registration and a small team based in Málaga. Our antivirus network shows zero malicious or suspicious flags across 92 engines, and the domain ranks in the global top-100k by traffic. The site partners with security vendors to scan files before publication and publishes transparency reports claiming 94.1% of recent uploads have zero detections. Independent review aggregators rate it as legitimate and safe. However, the evidence package includes two older user complaints mentioning virus detections in specific downloads — a pattern consistent with any open APK repository where user-submitted or third-party tools may occasionally trigger false positives or contain legitimate security warnings. The brand-impersonation flag (Roblox) appears to reflect user search queries for older Roblox APKs rather than site-level impersonation.
Web Research Findings
Our live research agent queries scam-report databases, consumer-review sites, news coverage, and general web search for uptodown.com, then cross-checks business-registration records and look-alike domain patterns. Everything below is pulled from what it actually found.
- Domain registered December 20, 2002 (over 23 years old); headquartered in Málaga, Spain with <40 employees.
- Partners with VirusTotal to scan all files with 70+ antivirus engines before publication; publishes VT reports on download pages; claims 94.1% of recent files have zero detections.
- All files hosted on their own servers from official sources; manual editorial review in addition to automated scanning.
- Scamadviser rates it 'Very Likely Safe' with mainly positive reviews, high traffic (Tranco rank ~180), valid SSL, and long domain ownership.
- Some older user complaints (e.g. 2016 forum post) report viruses from downloads; mixed Trustpilot mentions of specific tools triggering VT detections.
- Widely discussed on Reddit, forums, and review sites as a popular alternative to Google Play for APKs and older versions; users recommend VirusTotal checks.
- Business model based on web advertising; states it never sells or trades user data and maintains full editorial independence.
- Scamadviseropen
"In summary, It seems that uptodown.com is legit and safe to use and not a scam website."
- Tom's Guideopen
"Uptodown is one of the more reputable free download sites out there."
- Early Bird Club forumopen
"Both sites are safe, along with apkmirror.com. Alot of forum members use them with no issues."
- Uptodown Transparency Centeropen
"No detections 94.10 %... Files analyzed by VirusTotal: 4,207,154"
Founded 2002 in Málaga, Spain; headquartered there; team <40 people; bootstrapped with no external investors
Consumer-review sites and tech publications rate Uptodown as legitimate and safe. Two older user-forum posts report virus detections in specific downloads (e.g., a tool flagged by antivirus vendors), but these appear to reflect individual file risks rather than site-level compromise. The site's transparency center reports that 94.1% of recent files analyzed by security vendors show zero detections. Tech publications describe Uptodown as 'one of the more reputable free download sites' and a popular alternative to Google Play for accessing older app versions. Business registration confirms the company was founded in 2002 in Málaga, Spain, and remains active and independent.
Antivirus Engines
Security Scans
Checked against the major public blocklists used by browsers and security tools — no hits.
Contact Verification
We fetched the page and looked for real-world contact details. Legitimate businesses almost always publish an email on their own domain, a phone number, and a postal address. Scam shops usually don't.
- No contact email found anywhere on the page.
- No phone number listed on the page.
- No postal address visible on the page.
- Page impersonates Roblox on a non-official domain.
- Links to 6 social profiles.
Domain & Encryption
Server Reputation
Still, stay alert
No major threat indicators — but a clean scan does not guarantee every page is safe, and phishing emails routinely spoof real domains.
- Double-check the exact URL in your address bar
Confirm you are actually on uptodown.com and not a lookalike like u-ptodown.com.com or an IDN homoglyph.
- Use a password manager
Password managers only auto-fill on the exact domain they were saved for — they refuse to fill lookalike domains, which is the single best phishing defence.
- OpenDiscuss this site on the forum
If you have first-hand experience with this site — good or bad — share it with the MalwareTips community.
Reputation Sources
How this domain rates across independent threat-intelligence and blocklist providers.
Referenced Domains
Outbound domains this page links to or loads resources from. Each links to its own security scan.
Safety FAQ
Common questions about this site, answered directly from the scan data above — so the answers always reflect the latest verdict on this page.
- Our automated security review found no threat indicators on uptodown.com. The site appears legitimate based on the signals we checked, but always stay alert for phishing emails that spoof real domains.
- uptodown.com passed our automated security checks with a trust score of 85/100. No antivirus engines or major blacklists flagged the site at the time of the last scan.
- Yes. uptodown.com presents a valid TLSv1.3 certificate issued by Sectigo Limited · Sectigo Public Server Authentication CA DV R36, expiring in 46 days. Note that SSL only encrypts the connection — it does not guarantee that the site itself is trustworthy.
- uptodown.com is 23.5 years old, registered on 12/19/2002 through Interdominios, Inc.. Scam domains are often freshly registered — a site under 6 months old warrants extra caution.
- No. All 92 antivirus engines in our malware network report uptodown.com as clean.
- No. uptodown.com is not currently listed on the major browser blocklist feeds that modern browsers use.
- uptodown.com resolves to an IP operated by OVH SAS in FR (usage type: Data Center/Web Hosting/Transit). Hosting location alone doesn't make a site good or bad, but unusual geography for a brand's claimed country is one of many signals we weigh.
- Yes. uptodown.com sits in the global top-100k on Cloudflare Radar, which means it has substantial real-world traffic. That does not automatically make it safe, but established brands almost always rank here and throwaway scam domains almost never do.
User reviews & comments(0)
Share your experience — "Lost $200 on a fake checkout" is more useful than "Scam". Your review helps others avoid traps.