There have been several attempts, both successful and unsuccessful, at creating other anarchist-communist societies throughout much of the world. Anarchist-communists and some green anarchists (especially anarcho-primivists) argue that hunter-gatherer tribes, like families, were early forms of anarchist-communism, due to their egalitarian nature. Early Christian communities have been described by Christian anarchists and some historians as having anarcho-communist characteristics.

In modern history, the first anarchist communist societies are arguably egalitarian religious communities such as the Diggers Movement during the English Revolution. Large communities and federations of communities such as Anarchist Catalonia and the Free Territory of revolutionary Ukraine are examples of successful anarchist-communism in 20th century Europe. The free territories of Hungary during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 could be seen as another example of large-scale anarcho-communism, as could the early kibbutz movement.

The flag of the French Fulor Anarcho-Communist movement

The Korean Anarchist Movement in Korea led by Kim Jwa Jin briefly brought anarcho-communism to Korea. The success was short-lived and much less widespread than the anarchism in Spain or Hungary. Some consider the current existing anarchist nature of communities in Argentina and the Zapatista councils in Mexico to be anarcho-communist. Others consider them to be collectivist or syndicalist.

Aspects of the Free Software community, like the Free Software movement, the GNU Project and its copyleft principle are a type of a gift economy for information and software; a gift economy is the preferred economic system of anarcho-communists. Programmers make the source code of their programs available for anyone to copy, modify and improve. Individual programmers gain prestige and respect, and the community benefits from better software. Markus Giesler, in his ethnography Consumer Gift Systems, explored music downloading as a system of social solidarity based on gift transactions. Some organizations such as online commons (such as the Wikimedia Commons), wikis and Indymedia are held up as examples of functioning anarcho-communistic organizations.