Yes. It comes from onionoo, the official Tor metrics service, and refreshes every few minutes, so the relay counts are current.

A relay is a volunteer-run server that passes along Tor traffic. Thousands of them together provide the network's anonymity.

Does it show exact locations?

No — onionoo now reports only each relay's country, so the map plots relays by country rather than precise points.

No. The onionoo service is free and key-less; the saver only needs an internet connection.

Yes — free, no download, in your browser.

Why does Tor use three relays?

Splitting the path means no single relay sees both the sender and the destination. The guard knows the source, the exit knows the target, and the middle relay links them without learning either.

What is an exit relay?

It is the last hop in a circuit, the one that connects to the destination. Traffic leaves the Tor network there, so the destination sees the exit relay rather than the original sender.

Are all Tor relays shown on the map?

Only publicly listed ones. Bridges are kept out of the public directory so that their addresses can be distributed separately, which helps resist censorship.

Tor Network Screensaver

The Tor Network screensaver is a live world map of the Tor anonymity network — thousands of volunteer relays glowing by country — from the key-less onionoo service. It's free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.

How the Tor Network screensaver works

The saver queries onionoo, the official service that tracks the Tor network's relays, for every running relay right now.

It tallies the relays by country and plots each country on a world map with a glow sized to its relay count.

Germany, the United States, France and the Netherlands light up brightest, the volunteer backbone of Tor.

The total count and the top countries are shown, and it refreshes every few minutes.

How Tor uses volunteer relays to hide your path

Tor, short for The Onion Router, is free software and an overlay network maintained by the Tor Project, a US nonprofit. Its core idea, onion routing, was developed in the mid-1990s by researchers at the US Naval Research Laboratory, and the code was later released under a free licence. Traffic is wrapped in layers of encryption and sent through three relays in turn: a guard, a middle and an exit. No single relay sees both where the traffic came from and where it is going.

The relays are run by volunteers around the world. Nine directory authorities vote hourly to produce a consensus list of the relays currently running, and clients download it at startup. Onionoo, a web service documented by the Tor Project, summarises currently running relays and bridges as JSON so other tools can query them.

Remember what the map shows. A country is the location of a relay, not of any person using Tor, and a relay count says nothing about how much traffic crosses it. Bridges, which are relays left out of the public directory so their addresses can be handed out separately, help people in places where Tor is blocked. The display makes no statement about anyone’s purpose.

A worked example

The map glows over Europe and North America — Germany · 1,800 relays, United States · 1,500, the Netherlands and France close behind — thousands of volunteer machines that together carry the world's anonymous traffic.

Settings & tips

Relay color recolours the country glows.
Background sets the map backdrop.
Marker size reflects how many relays each country hosts.

Frequently asked questions

Is the data live?: Yes. It comes from onionoo, the official Tor metrics service, and refreshes every few minutes, so the relay counts are current.
What is a Tor relay?: A relay is a volunteer-run server that passes along Tor traffic. Thousands of them together provide the network's anonymity.
Does it show exact locations?: No — onionoo now reports only each relay's country, so the map plots relays by country rather than precise points.
Does it need a key?: No. The onionoo service is free and key-less; the saver only needs an internet connection.
Is it free?: Yes — free, no download, in your browser.
Why does Tor use three relays?: Splitting the path means no single relay sees both the sender and the destination. The guard knows the source, the exit knows the target, and the middle relay links them without learning either.
What is an exit relay?: It is the last hop in a circuit, the one that connects to the destination. Traffic leaves the Tor network there, so the destination sees the exit relay rather than the original sender.
Are all Tor relays shown on the map?: Only publicly listed ones. Bridges are kept out of the public directory so that their addresses can be distributed separately, which helps resist censorship.

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