Type: Official Tor Project site mirror
Purpose: Tor Browser downloads and documentation in censored environments
Clearnet: torproject.org
Nonprofit: Yes — 501(c)(3), incorporated 2006
Last verified: March 2026
Onion Address
About the Tor Project
The Tor Project is the nonprofit organisation that develops and maintains the Tor network and Tor Browser. It was incorporated in 2006, though the underlying onion routing research dates to the mid-1990s at the US Naval Research Laboratory. The network today consists of approximately 7,000–8,000 volunteer-operated relays serving millions of daily users.
The organisation’s mission is straightforward: ensuring private, uncensored internet access for everyone. It achieves this through the Tor network — which routes traffic through multiple encrypted relays so no single node knows both sender and destination — and Tor Browser, which packages the network access with a pre-hardened Firefox-based browser.
Why the .onion Address Exists
In countries where Tor is actively blocked — China, Iran, Russia, Belarus — users cannot reach torproject.org to download Tor Browser or obtain bridges. The .onion address is a bootstrap resource: reachable via an existing Tor connection (from a friend’s device, a public connection or another country), it allows downloading Tor Browser or obtaining bridge addresses to re-establish blocked access.