The Tor Project's decision on its relationship with Mullvad, and the debate around it

After a political donation by a co-founder of VPN provider Mullvad drew criticism, the Tor Project published a statement on 9 October saying it would not end its relationship with Mullvad. The statement says it is setting clear boundaries: technical collaboration continues under the two parties' narrowly scoped agreement, proactive co-branding is paused, and Tor has revised how its own channels describe Mullvad Browser. As of 12 October, the latest stable release of both Tor Browser and Mullvad Browser is 15.0.24 from late September, and neither has announced a halt in maintenance.

The controversy began with a 26 June report by Swedish outlet Flamman: in 2025 one co-founder personally gave 5 million Swedish kronor to the Swedish party Örebropartiet, 72% of the party's income that year. Flamman calls it a populist party that advocates large-scale remigration. In a 20 July blog post, Mullvad said it was a private donation the company was not involved in, that it "does not condone it, nor condemn it", and that it "most likely was a bad idea".

Tor's statement says the collaboration improved the structure, maintainability and auditability of Tor Browser's code and gave more people another free, open-source privacy tool. Tor's IRS Form 990 for July 2023 to June 2024 lists about US$1.4 million from Mullvad, the largest corporate source. The statement gives no figures, and as of 12 October Tor's financials page only goes up to the year ending June 2024.

Perspective

Mullvad Browser launched in April 2023 and is distributed by Mullvad; Tor describes it as "Tor Browser without the Tor Network". The two share version numbers and release dates, and Mullvad Browser is signed by the Tor Browser developers, so in our reading they share most of their code. The difference is the connection: Tor Browser uses the Tor network, reaches onion services and has built-in censorship circumvention, while Mullvad Browser is meant to be used with a VPN the user trusts, or without one.

Tor's statement says it defends free speech but strongly opposes rhetoric that threatens other human rights and freedoms, and that privacy work is severely under-resourced and sometimes requires difficult compromises. Mullvad's post says the company stands for freedom of speech, freedom of information and privacy, and keeps its mission separate from its founders' personal views. A volunteer group that runs one Snowflake bridge (an entry point to Tor for people on censored networks), and says it is not part of the Tor Project, announced on 5 August that it would refuse Mullvad's donations because they went to what it called a "dangerous populist political party", even though that leaves only about a quarter of what it needs to cover annual expenses.

The forum comments under Tor's blog post numbered eight as of 12 October, three supporting the continued relationship and three critical or condemning (comments are a small, self-selected group and do not represent the community as a whole). Supporters wrote that Mullvad's mission aligns with Tor's and that losing Mullvad Browser would harm users.

On the critical side, one comment condemned the decision outright. Another, from someone who says they are a former Tor Browser developer, wrote that Mullvad has no developers on the browser and only provides money, so calling it "technical collaboration" is misleading. Tor's support page says the browser is developed by the Tor Project in collaboration with Mullvad, and Mullvad's announcement says Tor's engineers develop it; neither says whether Mullvad staff take part.

Tor's statement says the decision followed discussions with the community, staff and board, a staff survey and financial analysis, but it has not published the survey results or the figures. One forum comment asked what share of the budget comes from Mullvad and whether all donations get the same scrutiny. As of 12 October, no Tor Project staff had replied in the thread, and Mullvad's blog had no new post about the statement.

On Hacker News, the thread about the statement had 353 comments by 12 October, with 22 visible top-level comments (another 11 were flagged and hidden), which are likewise not representative. Four top-level comments understood or supported the decision, two of them arguing that funding for such tools is scarce and cutting ties may not serve the mission better. Five disputed the line the statement draws on speech, for example arguing that free speech is absolute, while replies countered that Tor simply does not want to be associated with that speech. Three criticised the statement for leaving out the details of the donation and party or for sounding like corporate PR, and one worried that relying on Mullvad's money could affect Tor's independence.

As of 12 October, GreatFire's third-party monitoring showed mullvad.net failing its last 16 conclusive tests in mainland China, and www.torproject.org failing both of its only two conclusive tests, the latest about two months earlier. In our reading, getting either browser in mainland China means getting around the block first, and Tor's decision does not change that.

Readers using Tor Browser or Mullvad Browser do not need to change anything as of 12 October. The dispute is about funding and organisational positions, and in our reading, given that the technical collaboration continues under the agreement, the browsers' privacy protections are unaffected. Readers who mind the funding should note that Tor Project engineers maintain both browsers, so switching from one to the other does not change the money flowing between Tor and Mullvad. Things to watch are whether the co-branding pause has an end date, whether Tor discloses Mullvad's recent share of its funding, and the next financial report.

Questions for comparison: what standard should a privacy-tool developer use to vet corporate funders, and is it applied consistently; can a company be judged separately from a founder's personal political donation; do pausing promotion and revising descriptions let users tell the scope of a collaboration from an organisation's position; and could an open-source browser still in maintenance find other funding if the collaboration ended?