Tor Browser vs Mullvad Browser in 2026

These two share a codebase and a development team. Mullvad Browser was built by Mullvad VPN together with the Tor Project, and it is essentially Tor Browser with the Tor network removed. Everything that makes Tor Browser resistant to fingerprinting is here; what is missing is onion routing. That single difference is the entire comparison.

The same defence, a different carrier

Both apply the same technique: make every user look identical rather than hide individual traits. resistFingerprinting is on, window dimensions are normalised by letterboxing, fonts are standardised, and canvas and WebGL are blocked. Both score 5 for privacy and both ship uBlock Origin. If you compared the two on anti-fingerprinting alone you would struggle to tell them apart, which is the point.

The difference is what carries the traffic. Tor Browser routes through three relays so no single party sees both who you are and what you requested, and nobody — including the Tor Project — can undo that. Mullvad Browser routes through nothing; you are expected to supply a VPN, from Mullvad or anyone else. That means you trade a distributed trust model for a single company you have chosen to trust.

What that costs in practice

Tor Browser scores 2 for speed against Mullvad's 3, because onion routing is slow by design. Mullvad over a good VPN feels close to normal browsing. Mullvad scores 2 for ease, the lowest in our directory, against Tor's 3: it has no sync, no password manager, no bookmark persistence, and it actively discourages adding extensions because each one makes you distinguishable.

Reach differs too. Tor Browser runs on Windows, macOS, Linux and Android; Mullvad Browser is desktop only, with no mobile build at all.

Which should you choose?

Choose Tor Browser if the network itself is part of your threat model — if it matters that no observer can link your identity to your traffic, or if you need onion services. It is the stronger tool and the slower one, and there is no substitute for what it does.

Choose Mullvad Browser if you already pay for a VPN you trust and want Tor-grade fingerprinting resistance without the latency. It is a narrower tool than people expect: not a daily driver, but excellent for sessions where you want to be unremarkable rather than untraceable.