The Tor Project has published its Form 990 tax filings and an independent audit of its financial statements to offer a detailed account of where its funding comes from and how it is spent. Tor emphasizes that for a project devoted to privacy, transparency is not a contradiction but a deliberate choice—one intended to strengthen trust and community confidence.
The disclosures cover Tor’s 2023–2024 fiscal year, which runs from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024, rather than following the calendar year. According to the organization, this period reflected the payoff from investments in fundraising: new staff were hired, policies and procedures were formalized, and greater emphasis was placed on diversifying revenue streams. While the underlying documents had been available previously, Tor is only now publishing a detailed narrative breakdown, citing limited resources as the reason for the delay.
In the audited financial statements, total revenue and support amounted to $8,005,661, whereas Form 990 reports a lower figure of $7,287,566. Tor stresses that this discrepancy is not an error but a consequence of differing accounting rules. The audit counts “in-kind” donations as income—totaling $768,413—while Form 990 records such contributions as expenses.
By “in-kind,” Tor refers not to cash but to community contributions. Over the year, these were estimated to include 7,614 hours of development work, 1,894,720 translated words, cloud hosting for 23 servers, and 26 certificates. Tor acknowledges that this assessment is still incomplete, as it does not yet capture the substantial time and costs borne by relay operators, and promises to refine its methodology in the future.
Tor then breaks down revenue as reported in Form 990 by category. The largest source remains funding from the U.S. government, accounting for 35.08%, or $2,556,472. For context, Tor notes that in 2021–2022, U.S. government funding represented 53.5% of total revenue. The organization views the decline as progress toward its long-term goal of reducing reliance on any single funding source, while acknowledging that further work remains.
To dispel suspicion and counter “FUD,” Tor provides a detailed list of U.S. government donors and explains which projects they supported. The largest contributor was the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, which provided $2,121,049. These funds supported censorship circumvention efforts within the Tor ecosystem—particularly with a focus on China, including initiatives to expand access to uncensored internet services in China, Hong Kong, and Tibet, where the Guardian Project acted as a sub-grantee—as well as development of the Tor VPN client for Android, mitigation of malicious relays, and modernization of network components through the Rust-based Arti implementation, which Tor describes as a more secure foundation. A portion of this funding was also passed through to the Open Observatory of Network Interference.
Additional funding came via the National Science Foundation and Georgetown University, totaling $14,715, to support experimental and research infrastructure related to large-scale network simulation using the Shadow Simulator. Another donor in this category was the International Republican Institute, which contributed $80,029 for localization of Tor tools and materials into Arabic, Chinese, and Swahili, including OnionShare and instructional videos. The Open Technology Fund provided $340,681, supporting projects such as assistance for users circumventing blocks on USAGM resources, a “Rapid Response” initiative for Turkmenistan—including Turkmen-language materials and functional bridges—and the sustainable development of Tails.
Tor underscores that all government funding is awarded through competitive processes and that projects are designed and overseen by Tor and its community within clearly defined contractual frameworks.
The second-largest revenue category consists of donations from corporations and nonprofit organizations, representing 21.59%, or $1,573,300. Tor attributes this growth to broader partnerships and support from organizations such as OpenSats and the Omidyar Network, as well as ongoing collaboration with Mullvad VPN on the Mullvad Browser and continued improvements to Tor Browser. This category also includes membership fees from partners like DuckDuckGo, Proton, and Word Unscrambler, though Tor notes that not all contributing organizations are listed in the blog post.
Foundations contributed 18.67%, or $1,395,494. Tor explains that some of these funds were targeted grants aligned with roadmap priorities—for example, support for Arti from Zcash Community Grants and backing from the Open Society Foundations* for deploying a new bridge distribution system. Other funds were unrestricted, not tied to specific deliverables, including contributions from #StartSmall, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, and the Ford Foundation.
Individual donations accounted for 15.61%, or $1,102,619. Tor describes this stream as a mix of one-time and recurring contributions, ranging from small donations to substantial annual gifts. Contributions arrive in various forms, including ten different cryptocurrencies, which are later converted into U.S. dollars. Tor highlights the particular importance of these funds, as they are unrestricted and allow the organization to respond quickly to censorship events, develop tools with greater flexibility, and maintain reserves for emergencies.
Funding from non-U.S. governments is reported separately at 7.58%, or $552,387. Here, Tor cites Sida—the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, operating on behalf of Sweden’s parliament and government. According to Tor, this support enables user research, localization, user assistance, usability improvements, and training for communities and trainers.
The remaining “other” category, totaling 1.47% or $107,293, is associated with the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium. Tor notes that it supports the annual PETS conference by providing organizational structure and financial stability.
Turning to expenses, Tor reports $7,343,602 in Form 990 and $8,112,015 in the audited statements—once again reflecting the treatment of in-kind contributions, which are included in the audit but excluded from Form 990. Under Form 990 classifications, expenses are divided into administration, fundraising, and programmatic costs, encompassing Tor’s core development and user support. For the year, 84% of expenditures went to program activities, 10% to administration, and 6% to fundraising.
In closing, Tor reiterates a point frequently emphasized by its co-founder Roger in past reports: Tor’s budget is modest relative to its global impact, and the per-user cost is lower than that of most VPN services because the network is distributed and sustained by the contributions of thousands of relay operators. At the same time, Tor observes that its annual revenue pales in comparison to what, in its view, adversaries of privacy spend to suppress anonymity. The organization thanks its donors and encourages continued support not only through financial contributions, but also through participation—such as volunteering or running a relay.