Tor VPN turns one, and anti-censorship and stability take center stage

The Tor Project's Android VPN marked its first year The provider confirms a pivot toward circumvention and reliability Adoption has been strongest in heavily censored regions One year after the Tor Project quietly rolled out Tor VPN Beta , the team behind the anonymity network has shared what it lea

<![CDATA[ <article> <ul><li><strong>The Tor Project's Android VPN marked its first year </strong></li><li><strong>The provider confirms a pivot toward circumvention and reliability</strong></li><li><strong>Adoption has been strongest in heavily censored regions</strong></li></ul><p>One year after the Tor Project quietly rolled out <a href="https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-services/the-tor-project-quietly-launches-a-beta-android-vpn-and-looks-for-testers">Tor VPN Beta</a>, the team behind the anonymity network has shared what it learned, and the message is clear: people are reaching for it to unblock the internet.</p><p>The app, which is Android-only for now, was designed to stretch Tor's privacy protections beyond the browser and across an entire device. When it soft-launched last autumn, that primary use case became clear almost immediately, and it has steered how the project prioritizes its work ever since.</p><p>Unlike the usual <a href="https://www.techradar.com/vpn/best-vpn">best VPN</a> services, Tor VPN was never built to win speed tests. It routes traffic through the volunteer-run Tor network rather than a company's own servers, trading raw performance for a very different kind of privacy.</p><figure class="van-image-figure inline-layout" data-bordeaux-image-check ><div class='image-full-width-wrapper'><div class='image-widthsetter' style="max-width:1200px;"><p class="vanilla-image-block" style="padding-top:26.17%;"><img id="Z7QHFc4GHoMhdps5XmntoC" name="LNT-masthead" alt="Leave No Trace logo" src="https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/Z7QHFc4GHoMhdps5XmntoC.png" mos="" align="middle" fullscreen="" width="1200" height="314" attribution="" endorsement="" class="inline"></p></div></div><figcaption itemprop="caption description" class=" inline-layout"><span class="credit" itemprop="copyrightHolder">(Image credit: Future)</span></figcaption></figure><p><strong>NEW</strong>: <a href="https://x.wayin.com/display/container/dc/efe848be-588a-4e20-8711-6e02de64b315/details" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><strong>Leave No Trace</strong></a> — A weekly newsletter on digital privacy and online surveillance.</p><p>Leave No Trace investigates the companies and governments putting our digital freedom at risk — and the people fighting back.</p><p>📩 <a href="https://x.wayin.com/display/container/dc/efe848be-588a-4e20-8711-6e02de64b315/details">Subscribe now</a> to get every edition delivered to your inbox every Friday, launching this September.</p><h2 id="what-makes-tor-vpn-different">What makes Tor VPN different</h2><p>Instead of pushing every app through a single shared tunnel, Tor VPN gives each app its own Tor circuit and exit IP, so activity in one app cannot easily be linked to another. </p><p>The Tor Project frames this as a kind of "per-app pseudonymity," an idea lifted directly from the anti-tracking design of <a href="https://www.techradar.com/reviews/tor-browser">Tor Browser</a>.</p><p>Under the hood, the app runs on Arti, Tor's next-generation implementation written in Rust, which brings safer memory handling and a more modern codebase than the older C-based tools. A Rust tunnelling layer called Onionmasq handles the low-level plumbing, capturing device traffic and feeding it into the network.</p><h2 id="a-year-of-hardening-and-what-39-s-coming-next">A year of hardening, and what's coming next</h2><p>Much of the past 12 months went into stability rather than flashy additions. The team credits the Arti foundation with fewer crashes and better handling of shifting network conditions, and successive beta releases have steadily chipped away at bugs.</p><p>The project also passed an independent security review. As <a href="https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-services/the-tor-project-takes-a-major-step-toward-launching-its-mobile-vpn-with-successful-cure53-audit">TechRadar reported</a>, a Cure53 penetration test found no fundamental flaws in how Tor VPN routes traffic or builds its tunnels, leaving only lower-level issues to patch.</p><div class="see-more see-more--clipped"><figure><blockquote class="twitter-tweet hawk-ignore" data-lang="en" cite="https://twitter.com/cantworkitout/status/2097744936187859425"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">A year ago, we soft-launched Tor VPN Beta as a way to extend Tor's privacy protections beyond the browser to an entire Android device. Since then, we've been able to learn from how people are actually using it in real-world scenarios. Learn more about what makes our per-app…<a href="https://twitter.com/cantworkitout/status/2097744936187859425">September 9, 2026</a></p></blockquote></figure><div class="see-more__filter"></div></div><p>On the circumvention side, the team added <a href="https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/tor-has-a-new-https-esque-feature-to-help-beat-censorship">WebTunnel bridges</a>, which disguise Tor traffic as ordinary encrypted web traffic and make connections harder to detect and block.</p><p>Engagement has been strongest in heavily censored regions such as Iran and Turkmenistan, in fact, a notable contrast to Tor Browser's more Global North audience.</p><p>The project also made its builds reproducible and brought the app to F-Droid, so users can verify what they are running and update without leaning on Google Play.</p><p>Now, the roadmap leans into building on the features users rely on most. </p><p>The Tor Project says it will keep sharpening circumvention in restrictive environments, refine the interface to reduce risky mistakes, and port more of Arti's missing performance features, such as congestion control, into the mobile experience. </p><p>Exit selection, which tripped up testers who really needed bridges, is also being reworked.</p><h2 id="why-use-tor-vpn-and-how">Why use Tor VPN, and how</h2><figure class="van-image-figure inline-layout" data-bordeaux-image-check ><div class='image-full-width-wrapper'><div class='image-widthsetter' style="max-width:512px;"><p class="vanilla-image-block" style="padding-top:56.25%;"><img id="F37f7g9znzKUVD2X6e62pj" name="TorVPN" alt="Three smartphones over a blue and purple background, each running the Tor VPN app." src="https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/F37f7g9znzKUVD2X6e62pj.jpg" mos="" align="middle" fullscreen="" width="512" height="288" attribution="" endorsement="" class="inline"></p></div></div><figcaption itemprop="caption description" class=" inline-layout"><span class="credit" itemprop="copyrightHolder">(Image credit: The Tor Project)</span></figcaption></figure><p>Tor VPN suits anyone who wants device-wide anonymity that a standard provider cannot match, especially people living with everyday network restrictions. I</p><p>If you are mainly after speed and streaming, one of the <a href="https://www.techradar.com/vpn/best-mobile-vpn">best mobile VPN</a> apps is probably a better fit, as one hands-on test clocked Tor VPN at just 3 to 4 Mbps.</p><p>It's worth stressing that this is still beta software. The Tor Project explicitly warns it is not suitable for high-risk users yet, and some Android device identifiers can still leak.</p><p>To try it, head to the Tor Project's <a href="https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-services/the-tor-project-quietly-launches-a-beta-android-vpn-and-looks-for-testers" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">download pages</a>, where you can grab it as an APK, from the Google Play Store, or now via F-Droid.</p><div data-widget-type="multimodelreview" data-model-name="NordVPN,Surfshark,Proton VPN" data-widget-title="Today's best VPN deals"></div> </article> ]]>