By Monica J. White
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The Tor Project quietly launches a beta Android VPN – and looks for testers
Monica J. White
18 September 2025
The Tor Project continues its fight for online privacy, this time with a VPN app
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Image credit: Pixabay
(Image credit: Shutterstock / Daniel Constante)
The Tor Project has launched a VPN app, focused on privacy protection and censorship unblocking
Tor VPN is an experimental Android-only VPN currently in beta
Tor is actively seeking testers to try it and report bugs, but warns it’s not ready for high-risk use yet
The Tor Project, known for its highly anonymous Tor browser, has just expanded into VPNs.
The company’s first “experimental” Android VPN app is currently in beta and available on the Google Play Store.
Dubbed the Tor VPN, the app appears to prioritize avoiding censorship and increasing online privacy.
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Tor is now actively seeking testers to try it and report bugs.
Although you can already give it a go for yourself, the developers warn that the app is still in its early days and not ready for high-risk use yet, meaning it cannot rival the best VPN providers.
How does the Tor VPN work?
The new Tor VPN appeared on the Google Play Store with little to no fanfare, and its main home on the internet outside of that store listing is the project’s GitHub repository.
It’s entirely open source, which means its code is public.
The Tor Project has released an official VPN app that allows Android users to route all their traffic through the Tor network
play.google.com/store/apps/d…— @campuscodi.risky.biz (@campuscodi.risky.biz.bsky.social) 2025-09-18T16:49:16.060Z
According to the Play Store page, the Tor VPN will offer network-level privacy. It hides your real IP address, which is a basic feature offered by every virtual private network (VPN) software, but it uses the Tor network to protect against censorship and privacy threats.
The app also gives you access to split tunneling, which means that you can choose which apps are routed through the Tor network.
Each app that goes through Tor gets its own IP, meaning that outsiders won’t be able to connect your overall online activity across multiple apps.
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What’s the difference between the Tor VPN and the browser?
The main difference between Tor Browser and the new Tor Android app is the way it integrates with your device and routes traffic.
Tor Browser is essentially a customized version of Firefox that only shields your activity from within the browser. It forces all your browser traffic through the Tor Network, hiding your IP and encrypting your connections via at least three encryption layers, while splitting requests across multiple volunteer-run relays (or nodes).
On the other hand, Tor VPN works at the system level. It lets you choose which apps send their traffic through the Tor network. Each app can get its own unique “circuit” and exit IP, which makes it harder to link your activity across different services. Effectively, the VPN extends Tor’s anonymity beyond just web browsing.
(Image credit: The Tor Project)
Under the hood, Tor VPN Beta is also built on newer infrastructure. It uses Arti, the Tor Project’s next-gen Rust implementation. This infrastructure is designed to be more secure than the older C-based code that powers the Tor Browser.
The app also includes built-in bridges like obfs4 (disguises your traffic as random data) and Snowflake (disguises your traffic as a video call). These turn Tor traffic into other types of data to bypass censorship.
The app is in beta, and it might be risky
The Tor VPN app is still experimental, may leak information, and isn’t quite ready for high-risk use.
The company warns: “If you face extreme surveillance risks, we recommend against using Tor VPN Beta.”
At the moment, it’s more of a testing ground, and the app is still clearly in its infancy. We’ll have to wait and see how Tor’s signature VPN develops and how it compares to leading VPN solutions.
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Monica J. White
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Contributing Writer
Monica is a tech journalist with over a decade of experience. She writes about the latest developments in computing, which means anything from computer chips made out of paper to cutting-edge desktop processors.
GPUs are her main area of interest, and nothing thrills her quite like that time every couple of years when new graphics cards hit the market.
She built her first PC nearly 20 years ago, and dozens of builds later, she’s always planning out her next build (or helping her friends with theirs). During her career, Monica has written for many tech-centric outlets, including Digital Trends, SlashGear, WePC, and Tom’s Hardware.
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