Think of the dark web as a hidden, members-only club for the internet. You can’t just waltz in with your Chrome or Safari (or any other regular browser you use). You need a special key, like the Tor Browser. Tor works like a digital witness protection program, bouncing your connection around the world so no one can trace it back to you.

But here’s the real talk: this club has a sketchy back room. While it’s a lifeline for journalists and activists, it’s also crawling with scammers, digital pickpockets, and worse. So if you must go in (have legitimate needs to get on the dark web), don’t wander blindly—cover your tracks with a VPN and treat every unknown link like a tripwire. Below we go with the steps you need to follow to start browsing the dark web:

1. Get a Trustworthy VPN

Before you dive into the dark web, you need to get a VPN to serve as your initial form of protection. While a VPN is not required to access onion sites, it’s highly recommended to have one. Quality premium VPNs really do a great job at hiding your information and your IP address from onlookers who lurk on the internet. It’s just what you must do before accessing the Tor network.

When it comes to VPNs, always choose paid options over the free ones because they offer better protection. One more thing to take note of in any VPN service is whether it offers a Kill switch and DNS leak protection. What this kill switch does is to disconnect your device when the VPN connection fails. A good number of quality VPNs exist today. NordVPN is our #1 recommendation for dark web browsing because of its security, privacy, and performance.

2. Download the Tor Browser from the Official Site

Tor Browser is the most commonly utilized application to access the dark web. It is a free, open-source web browser that routes your internet traffic across the Tor network.

The process of onion routing takes your traffic, encrypts it, and bounces it among at least three relay points (or nodes), which makes it almost impossible to trace the source of the data. Of course, using Tor will be considerably slower than browsing with a standard web browser.

Downloading and installing the Tor browser:

Visit the official Tor project website: Do your due diligence to avoid downloading malicious versions of the software, as many harmless and malicious impostors pose as Tor. Download only from the official link we provided.

Choose the operating system: Download the version specific to your device, Windows, Mac, or Android.

Open it: Run the installer executable and follow the instructions in the installer prompts. Once the Tor browser is installed, you can start exploring the websites you want. But we recommend doing the security settings exercise explained below, too.

Tor Browser’s security settings

Open the Tor browser and go to its settings by either clicking on the hamburger menu icon located in the top-right or typing ‘about:preferences‘ in the address bar. Next, go to the ‘Privacy & Security’ tab. There you will see the security level in the ‘Security’ section. By default, Tor has ‘Standard’ level set for the security; you’d want to set it to ‘Safest.’

3. Start Browsing

Alright, you have your VPN connected and set up the Tor Browser? Great. It is time for you to open your dark web browser, Tor, connect, and start browsing. Below you go with the steps to start accessing dark web sites safely:

Ensure that your VPN is connected (optional but highly recommended).
Open Tor browser and connect (it will only ask you to connect, anonymize your connection on first run, mostly, which only takes a few seconds).
Enter the URL of the onion website you want to visit.

If you are a first-time visitor or aren’t sure which website you want to visit, search engines such as DuckDuckGo, Ahmia, and Torch are your friends