For years this page was a list of links to the dark web. In October 2026 we went through it again over Tor, link by link, and none of them opened: almost every .onion address used the old format, which Tor stopped accepting in 2021, and the few in the new format no longer existed. It also had things that should never have been there, such as carding forums and shops selling cheap iPhones that are scams.
So we rebuilt it from scratch. Below are the sites that actually work, all checked on 28 October 2026, and what you should know before going in.
The deep web and the dark web are not the same thing
The deep web is everything search engines don't index: your email, your online banking, your company intranet, any page behind a login. It is most of the internet and you use it every day.
The dark web is a small part of the deep web: sites that only open with special software, mainly Tor. Their addresses end in .onion, and neither the visitor nor the server knows where the other one is. That is why journalists and dissidents use it, and criminals too.
How to get in
The easiest way is Tor Browser, a modified Firefox that sends all its traffic through the Tor network. Only download it from torproject.org, because fake versions with malware are around. On Android there is Tor Browser for Android, and on iPhone the Tor Project recommends Onion Browser.
If you want more isolation, Tails is an operating system that boots from a USB stick, sends everything through Tor and leaves no trace on the computer when you shut it down.
A valid .onion address today has 56 characters before the .onion, for example duckduckgogg42xjoc72x3sjasowoarfbgcmvfimaftt6twagswzczad.onion. The 16-character ones are the old format and won't open: Tor retired them in 2021 because their cryptography (1024-bit RSA and SHA-1) had become outdated.
Many ordinary websites also have an .onion version. If you visit one with Tor Browser, a ".onion available" button appears in the address bar and takes you to the official address. It is the safest way to get there, because you don't depend on any list, this one included.
.onion sites that work
Every address comes from the service's official website, and we opened each one over Tor before publishing it. The links only work in Tor Browser.
Search engines
- DuckDuckGo: the familiar search engine, without tracking. It searches the regular web, not the dark web.
duckduckgogg42xjoc72x3sjasowoarfbgcmvfimaftt6twagswzczad.onion - Brave Search: a search engine with its own index, independent of Google and Bing.
search.brave4u7jddbv7cyviptqjc7jusxh72uik7zt6adtckl5f4nwy2v72qd.onion - Ahmia: the best-known search engine for .onion sites. It filters out child abuse material, and you can also use it without Tor at ahmia.fi.
juhanurmihxlp77nkq76byazcldy2hlmovfu2epvl5ankdibsot4csyd.onion
News
- BBC: the full site, meant for people in countries where it is blocked.
www.bbcnewsd73hkzno2ini43t4gblxvycyac5aw4gnv7t2rccijh7745uqd.onion - The Guardian: the whole British newspaper.
www.guardian2zotagl6tmjucg3lrhxdk4dw3lhbqnkvvkywawy3oqfoprid.onion - Deutsche Welle: Germany's international public broadcaster.
www.dwnewsgngmhlplxy6o2twtfgjnrnjxbegbwqx6wnotdhkzt562tszfid.onion
Email and privacy
- Proton Mail: end-to-end encrypted email, based in Switzerland, with a free account.
protonmailrmez3lotccipshtkleegetolb73fuirgj7r4o4vfu7ozyd.onion - Riseup: a collective providing email, VPN and mailing lists to activists. Accounts are by invitation.
vww6ybal4bd7szmgncyruucpgfkqahzddi37ktceo3ah7ngmcopnpyyd.onion
Leaking to journalists
SecureDrop is the system news organisations use to receive documents from anonymous sources. Each outlet has its own .onion address.
- SecureDrop: the official directory of outlets that use it, with their addresses.
sdolvtfhatvsysc6l34d65ymdwxcujausv7k5jk4cy5ttzhjoi6fzvyd.onion - The Guardian
xp44cagis447k3lpb4wwhcqukix6cgqokbuys24vmxmbzmaq2gjvc2yd.onion - ProPublica
33xu4yhum2eiisxm6fntaslayop76fvaqgt3ak5dakdm3t7cub25cead.onion - Der Spiegel
q6vdlj2ukulrqk37piqgxucpcwtxzdjhvjzqrfbevuhrzimsgjltmpqd.onion - Stefania Maurizi: an Italian investigative journalist known for her work on WikiLeaks.
jxsb4ovmavjy3r64bak4ha63xwggf3nzf3vikvs23r2avm5rhzmaqtqd.onion
Software
- Tor Project: the project's website, with the downloads.
2gzyxa5ihm7nsggfxnu52rck2vv4rvmdlkiu3zzui5du4xyclen53wid.onion - Tor Project index: all its official .onion addresses, including Tor Metrics with statistics on the network.
xao2lxsmia2edq2n5zxg6uahx6xox2t7bfjw6b5vdzsxi7ezmqob6qid.onion - Debian: the index of its .onion services, package repositories included.
jvgypgbnfyvfopg5msp6nwr2sl2fd6xmnguq35n7rfkw3yungjn2i4yd.onion - Qubes OS: an operating system that isolates each task in its own virtual machine.
www.qubesosfasa4zl44o4tws22di6kepyzfeqv3tg4e3ztknltfxqrymdad.onion - Whonix: a system that runs in virtual machines and sends everything through Tor.
dds6qkxpwdeubwucdiaord2xgbbeyds25rbsgr73tbfpqpt4a6vjwsyd.onion - OnionShare: a program to share files, publish a website or chat over Tor from your own computer.
lldan5gahapx5k7iafb3s4ikijc4ni7gx5iywdflkba5y2ezyg6sjgyd.onion
Hosting
- Ablative Hosting: hosting for .onion services.
hzwjmjimhr7bdmfv2doll4upibt5ojjmpo3pbp5ctwcg37n3hyk7qzid.onion - Impreza Hosting: hosting and HTTPS certificates for .onion sites.
imprezareshna326gqgmbdzwmnad2wnjmeowh45bs2buxarh5qummjad.onion
Others
- Reddit: the whole social network.
www.reddittorjg6rue252oqsxryoxengawnmo46qy4kyii5wtqnwfj4ooad.onion - Archive Today: saves copies of web pages so they don't disappear.
archiveiya74codqgiixo33q62qlrqtkgmcitqx5u2oeqnmn5bpcbiyd.onion - CIA: the US intelligence agency has had a Tor site since 2019, so people can contact it from countries where doing so would be dangerous.
ciadotgov4sjwlzihbbgxnqg3xiyrg7so2r2o3lt5wz5ypk4sxyjstad.onion
Where to find more
The most reliable list we know of is Real-World Onion Sites, maintained by Alec Muffett, the engineer who built Facebook's .onion site. It only includes real organisations, each with proof that the address is theirs, and it checks every day which ones respond.
What we removed, and why
Some big names have or have had an official .onion address but did not respond in our tests: The New York Times, The Intercept, X (formerly Twitter) and ProPublica's main site. Facebook's answered with an error. If they come back, we will add them.
And there are things we will not link to, even if they are still up:
- The "Hidden Wikis". There is no original one, only dozens of copies that mix legitimate links with drug and weapons markets, child abuse material and fake clones of well-known services built to steal passwords and bitcoin.
- Shops selling cheap phones, gift cards or accounts. It is the oldest scam on the dark web: you pay in bitcoin and nothing arrives.
- Mixers and "anonymous" wallets. They exist to launder money; the founders of Samourai Wallet were arrested in 2024 and charged in the United States with exactly that.
- Hacking and carding forums.
Is Tor still anonymous?
The network holds up: there is no known way to decrypt Tor traffic. But the police do arrest people who use it, and they almost always get there another way:
- People's own mistakes. Ross Ulbricht, who created Silk Road, had asked for help on a forum using his Gmail address. The administrator of AlphaBay left his personal email in the messages the site sent to users.
- Browser flaws. The FBI exploited vulnerabilities in Firefox, which Tor Browser is built on, to get the real IP of visitors to child abuse sites in 2013 and 2015.
- The money. Bitcoin payments can be traced, and that is how more than 300 users of Welcome to Video, a child abuse site, were caught in 2019.
- Timing analysis. Whoever controls many nodes in the network can compare when traffic goes in and when it comes out. German police used it between 2019 and 2021 against the user of an old chat app that lacked today's protections. It came out in 2024, and the Tor Project replied that current versions defend against that attack.
For an ordinary user, Tor hides their IP from the sites they visit and hides what they do from their internet provider, although the provider can see they are using Tor. Against an investigation aimed at one specific person it is not an absolute guarantee, and most people who get caught are caught by their own mistakes.
Precautions
- Take addresses from the service's official website or from the ".onion available" button, never from a search engine or a wiki, and bookmark the ones you use.
- Raise Tor Browser's security level to "Safer" or "Safest". It disables parts of JavaScript, which is how almost every attack on the browser has got in.
- Don't open documents downloaded over Tor while you are online: a PDF or a Word file can connect to the internet outside Tor and reveal your IP.
- Don't install extensions. They make your browser different from everyone else's and easier to recognise.
- If you want anonymity, don't log in to your usual accounts or give out personal details.
For developers: your site on Tor
Publishing a website as an .onion service takes two lines in the server's torrc:
HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/my_site/
HiddenServicePort 80 127.0.0.1:8080When Tor restarts, the new address appears in /var/lib/tor/my_site/hostname. To make Tor Browser show the ".onion available" button on your regular site, send the Onion-Location header. In Apache, with mod_headers enabled:
Header set Onion-Location "http://your-address.onion%{REQUEST_URI}s"The same header lets you check the official address of any website:
curl -sI https://www.torproject.org | grep -i onion-locationIt returns Onion-Location: http://2gzyxa5ihm7nsggfxnu52rck2vv4rvmdlkiu3zzui5du4xyclen53wid.onion/index.html. Not every site sends it: the BBC and The Guardian, for example, publish their address on their own pages.
