Tor browser: what it is and what it costs

• Tor browser is a modified Firefox that sends traffic through three volunteer operated relays before it reaches the site.
• No single relay knows both who you are and where you are going, which is the whole point of the design.
• It is free, run by a non profit, and slow by construction. Three extra hops cost latency and bandwidth.
• It protects that browser only. Everything else on the computer connects normally.
• A VLESS key does the opposite trade: one hop, full speed, whole device, and one operator who knows the connection exists.
• Neither makes you anonymous if you sign into your own accounts. That part is behavior, not software.

Your request is wrapped in three layers of encryption and handed to a chain of relays. The first sees your address but not your destination. The middle sees neither. The last, the exit, sees the destination but not you. The circuit is rebuilt every few minutes, and the browser is also hardened so that fonts, screen size and plugins give away as little as possible. That bundle of defenses is why it stays the reference tool for people who genuinely need separation between identity and activity.

The costs are equally concrete. Pages load slowly, video is mostly impractical, and a lot of sites treat exit relays with suspicion, so expect repeated puzzles or outright refusal. Banks and payment services frequently block it altogether. It is a specialized instrument, and using it for ordinary browsing is like commuting in a diving suit.

• 5 days free, no card, no account, if you want to compare the two on your own line.
• 1 month: $4.90.
• 6 months: $3.90 a month, paid once as $23.40.
• 12 months: $3.20 a month, paid once as $38.40.
• 24 months: $2.90 a month, paid once as $69.60.
• One key, 5 devices, six locations: US, Canada, Mexico, UK, Netherlands, France.
• Cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay and crypto in the bot. Nothing renews by itself. Tor itself remains free, and we are not competing with it.

If the job is a filtered network, a regional catalog, a video call from a cafe or a game, a key is the right tool: it is fast, it covers every app, and it survives the evening. If the job is researching something where the link between you and the topic genuinely must not exist, and speed does not matter, that is what Tor was built for and a commercial service is not a substitute.

People also combine them, connecting the key first and then opening the browser on top. That hides the use of Tor from the local network and from your provider, which is sometimes the point. It does not make Tor faster, and it adds our server to the chain, so it is a choice about who sees what rather than an upgrade.

• Only traffic inside the browser goes through Tor. Other applications are untouched unless you configure them separately.
• Exit relays are run by volunteers, and the exit sees unencrypted traffic if a site does not use HTTPS.
• Many services block it, so banking, shopping and streaming through it range from painful to impossible.
• We do not publish guides to hidden services, and nothing here is an invitation to use either tool for gambling, piracy or anything illegal.