Snowflake is a pluggable transport developed by the Tor Project that wraps Tor traffic to look like a WebRTC video call, making it hard for censors to block. It is built directly into Tor Browser and Orbot for users in restricted regions. A companion browser extension lets volunteers donate bandwidth as Snowflake proxies.
Reviewed by Marcus Holmberg
Snowflake
snowflake.torproject.org No ratings yet. Be the first.
Rate Snowflake: No account needed
Threat level
Targeted
A targeted-tier tool. Built for a real, capable adversary. Overkill for everyone below. Threat levels
Our take
Snowflake solves a specific and important problem: getting Tor working in places that block it. The WebRTC disguise is harder to fingerprint and block than older transports like obfs4. The catch is it is not a standalone app but a transport layer, so it only helps if you are already using Tor Browser or Orbot. The volunteer proxy extension is a meaningful way to support censored users with minimal effort. Not relevant for users in uncensored regions who just want privacy.
Website at a glance
snowflake.torproject.org
B score 75
Solid website security headers
Graded by Mozilla HTTP Observatory, tested 1d ago
Inspect this site yourself
Measures the security configuration of the tool's own website, not the privacy of the product itself. A strong tool can still score low here.
Snowflake alternatives
IPFS The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a protocol and peer-to-peer network for storing and sharing data in a distributed file system. IPFS uses content-addressing to uniquely…
Tor Tor, short for The Onion Router, is for enabling anonymous communication. It directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network, consisting of more…
I2P The Invisible Internet Project (I2P) is an anonymous network layer that allows for censorship-resistant, peer-to-peer communication. Anonymous connections are achieved by…
GNUnet For decentralized, peer-to-peer networking and an official GNU package. The framework offers link encryption, peer discovery, resource allocation, communication over many…
Orbot Free, open-source Tor VPN app for Android and iOS that routes device traffic through the Tor network. Supports per-app Tor routing and access to .onion services on Android.
Hyphanet Hyphanet, formerly Freenet, is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant, anonymous communication. It uses a decentralized distributed data store to keep and deliver information, and has a…
* Average ratings will show on this page once the threshold of 5 ratings is reached.