400 million takedowns later: the BranditScan story.

2021 The $45 that changed everything

We launched with automated scanning and automated DMCA takedowns at a price the industry had never seen. And here's something most people don't know: there was no AI back then. It was automation plus an enormous amount of human work. Real people reviewing links, verifying leaks and pushing takedowns through, day and night. Even then, you could start with a free scan and a 7 day trial before paying a cent, because we wanted creators to see the leaks for themselves.

And by July, our first big swing: the Catfish Scanner for Instagram. You gave us a selfie and your brand names, and our facial recognition tech hunted down the imposter accounts. Social media removals were born.

The early days were rough. In our first year we filed 264K URLs with Google, spread across the three reporting names we used back then. Google capped our delistings at a couple of thousand a day. Delisting took an average of 7 days. A complete Google cleanup took 3 months. In the backend, we worked directly with industry partners and adjusted our detection around what they taught us. Those conversations are the groundwork to why our takedowns are the most accurate in the industry today.

Dashboard 1 • 2021

2022 The year we got a direct line to Google

2022 was about access, getting protection into more hands and onto more platforms.

• February: we went mobile, a fully revamped experience built after our community told us not everyone runs their business from a laptop.
• March: the Catfish Scanner expanded to Twitter, hunting imposters on a second platform.
• We joined Google's Trusted Copyright Removal Program, putting our takedowns on a direct line to the world's biggest search engine. The result: 14.5 million URLs filed for delisting in 2022, up from 264K in all of 2021.
• June: we launched the BranditScan blog, weekly education on piracy, catfishing and creator life. You're reading it right now.

Dashboard 2 • 2022

2023 37 million takedowns and one expensive lesson

2023 was about scale and precision, taking down more than ever while making sure the right things came down:

• 37.1 million URLs filed with Google for delisting, more than double the year before.
• March: we launched Watchdog, free domain delisting protection that verifies and whitelists piracy-free sites, so legitimate businesses never get caught in the crossfire. Takedowns only work if they're accurate.

These middle years also came with an expensive education in the legal system. Alongside creator Korina Kova and one of our studio partners, we went through a series of lawyers pursuing pirates in court, and the reality became clear: copyright laws and their jurisdictions were written long before the world wide web, and they haven't caught up to pirates who operate across borders. Suing requires platform support, a court order, and a registered copyright just to get that court order. Something most creators simply don't have. We've been straight with creators about it ever since, and it's exactly why we built protection that works at the speed the internet actually moves.

Dashboard 3 • 2023

2024 The year it became free (and automatic)

By 2024 we did something no DMCA company had done: we made your entire first month free. Full protection, full takedowns, zero dollars. The logic was simple: creators should see what real protection does before paying for it. Today, free trials can be found across the industry, and we are so proud to have led that change.

• We became a sponsor of Pineapple Support, backing mental health support for adult creators.
• July: agencies got their own dashboard, tailored DMCA solutions with multi-creator management, so creators are protected no matter how they run their business.
• August: the AI finally arrived. Auto-Takedowns + AI Scans went live, powered by our first in-house AI model. Until then, creators confirmed every single link manually. Now the AI finds it, verifies it and files it, completely hands-off. Three years of human review became its training.
• November: we launched Make It Rain, paying creators up to $30 a post for promoting tools they already use.
• 81.4 million URLs filed with Google in 2024, more than doubling 2023 again.

Dashboard 4 • 2024 to 2025

2025 9 million takedowns in one week

2025 was about pairing protection with growth:

• April: Referral Rush launched, another income stream for creators: cash for every new creator you send our way.
• Our tech went B2B: platforms, studios and industry partners started running on BranditScan. If you're on one of the biggest platforms in the industry, there's a good chance our protection is what's being filed for you right now.
• 175.4 million URLs filed with Google in 2025, including our biggest week on record: over 9 million URLs in seven days.

2026 The biggest thing we've ever built

We went quiet for a while. Not because we were slacking, because we were building. On March 17, 2026, BranditScan V2 went live: our third rebrand, our fifth dashboard, and a complete rebuild of every screen, flow and feature around how creators actually work.

• March: V2 brought a brand new dashboard: your Brandit Score, active scans, takedown status and social profiles, all in one view.
• Full transparency: we show you the compliancy score BEFORE takedowns are sent, so you know exactly what to expect. Some pirate sites will never comply, and we'd rather you know that upfront than wait 30 days to find out.
• Automatic earning on TikTok + YouTube: when your content shows up, we don't just take it down, we can turn it into a payout.
• A scanner built for freshly released content, watching the high-risk window so nothing slips through.
• March also brought the White Glove tier: a personal concierge plus fully automated protection, built for PPV and clip-selling creators who need real-time, title-level protection.
• April: UrLinks went live, our link-in-bio page built to convert: 20+ themes, video headers, countdowns and conversion analytics. Free for every BranditScan user.
• FREE unlimited takedowns for platforms and business partners, with a public API and an integration as simple as adding an image to a website. Their users get unlimited free self-submissions, leaks come down within hours, and partners earn lifetime commissions on referrals. Never been done before.
• 72.2 million URLs filed with Google in just the first four months of 2026.

Dashboard 5 • V2 • 2026