The Tor Project develops free and open source software for privacy and freedom online, protecting people from tracking, surveillance, and censorship—the Tor network and Tor Browser. The Tor network is a decentralized privacy network designed to help people exercise their human right to privacy, freedom of speech, and access to information. Millions of people use the Tor network every day, most through [Tor Browser](https://torproject.org/download), a privacy-hardened version of the open source web browser Firefox.

The Tor network, Tor Browser, and all other software, tools, and documentation produced by the Tor Project are free and open source. The Tor network and Tor Browser are designed to be used, built, and stewarded by a large community with different interests, needs, and perspectives. The Tor network is volunteer-run, with thousands of community members donating server capacity to create a piece of collaborative infrastructure that is free to use.

Tor occupies a unique position in the ecosystem of decentralized privacy applications. No other tool offers the free end-to-end anonymity, security, censorship circumvention, tracking prevention, and privacy features provided in the Tor network and Tor Browser. The decentralization of the Tor network, as well as the sophistication of how it handles its decentralized infrastructure, does what no private VPN or proxy server can do. Many anonymity, privacy, and security technologies in the internet freedom space build on top of and depend on our network, including file sharing tools, whistleblowing platforms, instant messaging, and even Facebook.