Users
We estimate the number of users by analyzing the requests induced by clients to relays and bridges.
This graph shows the estimated number of directly-connecting clients; that is, it excludes clients connecting via bridges. These estimates are derived from the number of directory requests counted on directory authorities and mirrors. Relays resolve client IP addresses to country codes, so that graphs are available for most countries. Furthermore, it is possible to display indications of censorship events as obtained from an anomaly-based censorship-detection system (for more details, see this technical report). For further details check the documentation on Reproducible Metrics.
Related events
The following events have been manually collected in the metrics-timeline Git repository and might be related to the displayed graph.
| Dates | Places/Protocols | Description and Links |
|---|---|---|
| 2025-08-20 | snowflake |
The Snowflake broker starts zeroing out the count of daily unique proxy IP addresses. Before this, only *new* proxy IP addresses (new since the last broker restart) had contributed to the count each day.
issue |
| 2025-08-20 | snowflake |
The Snowflake broker starts doing client IP address geolocation for ampcache rendezvous.
issue |
| 2025-08-02 to 2025-08-13 | snowflake |
Outage of the snowflake-02 bridge, caused by a hardware failure.
issue |
| 2025-06-26 to 2025-07-04 | Togo obfs4 vanilla |
Partial blocking of Tor directory authorities and default obfs4 bridges in Togo during protests.
issue |
| 2025-06-18 to 2025-06-21 | Iran |
Network shutdown in Iran.
effects on Snowflake BBS thread NTC thread |
| 2025-06-10 | conjure meek moat snowflake |
Temporary outage of CDN77 domain fronting.
issue |
| 2025-06-05 | Belarus webtunnel |
Removed WebTunnel from Connection Assist in Belarus.
merge request |
| 2025-06-05 | China webtunnel |
WebTunnel becomes the primary transport in Connection Assist in China.
merge request |
| 2025-06-05 | Myanmar webtunnel |
WebTunnel becomes the primary transport in Connection Assist in Myanmar.
merge request |
| 2025-06-05 | Turkmenistan meek obfs4 snowflake |
Snowflake becomes the primary transport in Connection Assist in Turkmenistan.
merge request fix commit |
| 2025-04-28 | Turkmenistan snowflake Unknown |
Sustained large increase in bridge users from Turkmenistan, especially Snowflake, from near zero to over 5,000.
comment bridge users graph anti-censorship team meeting discussion April 2025 Snowflake Daily Operations update |
| 2025-01-25 | Belarus |
Presidential election in Belarus.
relay graph bridge graph |
| 2024-12-16 to 2024-12-20 | snowflake |
The snowflake-broker.azureedge.net CDN configuration is non-functional, as part of the transition to a new broker.
comment graph |
| 2024-11-25 | Russia snowflake |
Migration of the Snowflake broker to a new host at a different IP address. Standalone proxies erroneously continue to poll the old broker. NAT behavior self-testing is briefly disrupted.
issue DNS change issue tor-relays post |
| 2024-11-06 to 2024-11-21 | Russia snowflake |
Blocking of Snowflake DTLS connections in Russia.
issue BBS thread NTC thread |
| 2024-09-30 | snowflake |
Redeployed the Snowflake probetest with another fix to NAT type testing, aimed at reducing the number of instances of "restricted".
issue |
| 2024-09-18 | Bridges |
Bridge distribution transitions from BridgeDB to rdsys.
comment mailing list post |
| 2024-09-10 | snowflake |
Redeployed the Snowflake probetest with fixes to NAT type testing, aimed at reducing the number of instances of "unknown".
issue |
| 2024-08-22 to 2024-08-23 | snowflake |
Outage of the Snowflake broker.
issue |
| 2024-06-18 | snowflake |
Release of version 0.8.3 of the Snowflake proxy WebExtension, hoped to restore proxy capacity with its fixed consent prompt.
comment graph |
| 2024-06-10 | Bridges |
The bridge authority upgrades to tor version 0.4.8.12 and begins rejecting bridges running version 0.4.7.
mailing list post |
| 2024-06-09 to 2024-06-13 | Algeria |
Shutdowns during university exams in Algeria.
issue blog post |
| 2024-05-30 to present | Myanmar |
Blocking of VPNs in Myanmar. Bridge users increase.
issue |
| 2024-05-14 to present |
High load leading to network performance issues.
status.torproject.org forum post |
|
| 2024-05-11 | snowflake |
Loss of about 60,000 WebExtension Snowflake proxies, after the release of version 0.8.2 of the proxy WebExtension, the first release available for Chrome adding a consent prompt that existing users didn't notice.
issue |
| 2024-05-02 |
Release of Orbot for Android 17.2.1-RC-2-tor-0.4.8.7, the first release of Orbot 17 to appear on the Google Play Store. Orbot Snowflake proxies (kindness mode) increase.
release graph of Snowflake proxies |
|
| 2024-04-08 | snowflake |
Loss of about 15,000 WebExtension Snowflake proxies, after the release of version 0.8.0 of the proxy WebExtension, which adds a consent prompt that existing users didn't notice. Version 0.8.0 was released only for Firefox, not for Chrome.
issue |
| 2024-03-29 to 2024-04-24 | snowflake Unknown |
Temporary reductions in users of the snowflake-01 bridge, with simultaneous increases in users of the snowflake-02 bridge.
issue forum post |
| 2024-03-16 to 2024-04-08 | snowflake |
Version 0.7.3 of the Snowflake WebExtension is removed from the Firefox Add-ons store because of a policy change. Version 0.8.0 adds a consent prompt and is re-added to the store.
issue |
| 2024-03-15 | snowflake Unknown |
The Snowflake bridges suddenly recover a large amount of bandwidth, two weeks after the Fastly domain fronting change of 2023-03-01.
mailing list post |
| 2024-03-06 | moat snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 13.0.11, with workaround for the domain fronting change of 2024-03-01.
blog post Snowflake merge request Moat merge request |
| 2024-03-01 | moat snowflake |
Fastly stops supporting domain fronting. This affects Snowflake, Moat, and Connection Assist.
issue pre-announcement in November 2023 forum post bandwidth graphs |
| 2024-02-17 | snowflake |
Restart of snowflake-01 bridge for system upgrade
comment |
| 2024-02-17 | snowflake |
Restart of snowflake-01 bridge in preparation for upgrades
comment |
| 2024-02-09 |
Release of Orbot for Android 17.2.1-RC-1-tor-0.4.8.7.
release |
|
| 2024-02-08 to present | Pakistan |
Shutdowns on mobile ISPs in Pakistan on Election Day.
Cloudflare Radar tweet |
| 2024-02-04 to 2024-02-07 | Senegal |
Shutdown of mobile services in Senegal during protests.
article |
| 2024-01-31 to 2024-02-02 | Russia OR |
Plain Tor is temporarily unblocked in Russia.
NTC thread OONI chart |
| 2024-01-22 | snowflake |
Restart of snowflake-01 bridge for configuration and kernel updates
comment |
| 2023-12-21 | Bridges |
Release of Tor Browser 13.0.8. Fixes the problem of pluggable transports not running on Windows 7 and Windows 8, except for Snowflake.
blog post issue merge request |
| 2023-12-19 | Bridges |
Release of Tor Browser 13.0.7. Pluggable transports don't work with Windows 7 and Windows 8.
blog post issue |
| 2023-12-17 | snowflake |
Restart of snowflake-01 bridge for test of configuration changes
|
| 2023-12-15 | snowflake |
Upgraded tor from 0.4.8.8 to 0.4.8.10 on the snowflake-01 bridge. Fixes the bug that made user counts by country more imprecise.
comment graph monthly update |
| 2023-12-15 | snowflake |
Upgraded tor from 0.4.8.8 to 0.4.8.10 on the snowflake-02 bridge. Fixes the bug that made user counts by country more imprecise.
comment |
| 2023-12-08 |
Release of tor 0.4.8.10. Fixes TROVE-2023-007 affecting exit relays with Conflux. Fixes the bug that caused incorrect counting of pluggable transport users.
announcement |
|
| 2023-11-21 | snowflake |
Restarted the snowflake-02 bridge for a performance enhancement.
comment |
| 2023-11-21 | snowflake |
Restarted the snowflake-01 bridge for a performance enhancement.
comment |
| 2023-11-16 | Relays |
Removal of about 1,000 "ATOR" relays.
blog post blog post graph |
| 2023-11-07 | snowflake |
Restarted the snowflake-02 bridge for a performance enhancement. Upgraded tor from 0.4.8.6 to 0.4.8.8.
comment |
| 2023-10-20 | snowflake |
Restart of snowflake-01 bridge for Debian 11.8 upgrade. Upgraded tor from 0.4.8.6 to 0.4.8.7.
comment |
| 2023-10-12 |
Release of Tor Browser 13.0. First stable release with Conflux.
blog post tor-relays post |
|
| 2023-10-05 | snowflake |
Release of Orbot 17.1.0-RC-2-tor.0.4.7.14, again changing the domain front to attempt to work around Snowflake connection problems.
release commit |
| 2023-10-04 | snowflake Unknown |
The snowflake-02 bridge suddenly recovers a large amount of bandwidth, after two weeks of low usage following the domain front change of 2023-09-20.
mailing list post |
| 2023-10-03 | snowflake |
Upgraded tor from 0.4.7.13 to 0.4.8.6 on the snowflake-01 bridge. As with the upgrade on snowflake-02 on 2023-09-24, this causes the reporting of spurious OR protocol users.
comment mailing list post comment monthly update |
| 2023-09-28 | snowflake |
Release of Orbot 17.1.0-RC-1-tor.0.4.7.14, with an alternative domain front to attempt to work around Snowflake connection problems.
release commit |
| 2023-09-26 | snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 12.5.5, with an alternative domain front to attempt to work around Snowflake connection problems.
blog post merge request |
| 2023-09-24 | snowflake |
Upgraded tor from 0.4.7.13 to 0.4.8.6 on the snowflake-02 bridge. As the result of an apparent bug, the bridge starts reporting a number of OR protocol users about equal to the number of Snowflake users.
mailing list post about upgrade mailing list post about metrics problems core Tor issue metrics issue |
| 2023-09-24 | snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 13.0a5, with an alternative domain front to attempt to work around Snowflake connection problems.
blog post merge request |
| 2023-09-21 | snowflake Unknown |
The snowflake-01 bridge suddenly recovers a large amount of bandwidth, about 24 hours after the domain front change of 2023-09-20 started to lower the number of users.
mailing list post |
| 2023-09-20 | moat snowflake |
The front domain used by Snowflake, Moat, and Connection Assist starts sometimes resolving to a different CDN, which makes these services stop working for some users. The snowflake-01 bridge drops to about half its normal number of users; the snowflake-02 bridge drops almost to zero. There would later be sudden partial recoveries of usage on snowflake-01 at 2023-09-21 13:10:00 and snowflake-02 at 2023-10-04 11:40:00.
forum post about Snowflake forum post about Moat and Connection Assist |
| 2023-09-19 to 2023-10-31 | Azerbaijan |
Blocking of TikTok in Azerbaijan.
tweet about start tweet about end |
| 2023-09-19 to 2023-09-25 | Azerbaijan |
Blocking of Google Play Store in Azerbaijan.
tweet |
| 2023-08-23 to 2023-12-08 | Bridges |
A bug in tor 0.4.8.4 causes misattribution of about half of pluggable transport users to the plain Tor protocol in bridges that upgrade to this version. The bug is fixed in tor 0.4.8.10.
issue issue merge request |
| 2023-08-08 to present | Jordan |
Blocking of Grindr in Jordan.
OONI report |
| 2023-08-05 to present | Iraq |
Blocking of Telegram in Iraq.
Kentik report |
| 2023-06-12 to 2024-05-06 | Germany Relays Unknown |
Increase in relay users from Germany.
issue graph forum thread |
| 2023-06-01 to present | Senegal |
Blocking of social media in Senegal.
article OONI report |
| 2023-04-26 to present | Brazil |
Block of Telegram in Brazil.
OONI report |
| 2023-02-09 to present | Ethiopia |
Social media blocking in Ethiopia.
relay graph bridge graph BBS thread |
| 2023-02-01 to present | Senegal |
Blocking of TikTok in Senegal.
tweet |
| 2023-01-20 to present | webstats Unknown |
Tor Browser update pings drop temporarily. A similar effect is present in other years.
graph issue |
| 2022-09-21 to present | Iran |
Protests and daily Internet shutdowns in Iran.
OONI report BBS thread |
| 2022-02-24 to present | Russia Ukraine |
Russian invasion of Ukraine. In the following days, various social media are partially blocked in Russia. Bridge users increase in Russia; relay and bridge users increase in Ukraine.
Wikipedia Relay users in Russia Bridge users in Russia Relay users in Ukraine Bridge users in Ukraine OONI article |
| 2021-12-22 to present | Finland Relays Unknown |
Increase of relay users in Finland.
tor-talk thread possible explanation graph |
| 2021-12-01 to present | Russia |
Blocking of Tor directory authorities, relays, default obfs4 bridges, meek-azure, and Snowflake in some ISPs in Russia. There was a temporary cease of blocking for less than a day starting on 2021-12-08.
NTC thread BBS thread issue blog post OONI report |
| 2021-10-03 to present | Egypt Relays Unknown |
Increase of relay users in Egypt.
Twitter thread relay graph |
| 2021-06-10 to present |
Experiment to test latencies between relays.
status.torproject.org post announcing start |
|
| 2021-06-04 to present | Nigeria |
Block of Twitter in Nigeria. Increase in the number of bridge users.
article relay graph bridge graph |
| 2021-04-01 to present | Myanmar |
Shutdowns of wireless broadband in Myanmar.
Access Now post |
| 2021-01-01 to present | China snowflake Unknown |
Increased failure to bootstrap using Snowflake from China.
comment |
| 2020-10-27 to present | Tanzania, United Republic of OR obfs4 |
Blocking of Tor and default obfs4 bridges during elections in Tanzania.
OONI report |
| 2019-06-21 to present | Myanmar |
Internet shutdown in parts of Myanmar.
report 2020 report |
| 2019-04-27 to present | Russia Relays Unknown |
Relay users increase by about 100K, in an apparent weekly cycle. Bridge users are not similarly affected.
relay graph bridge graph tor-talk thread Reddit thread |
| 2019-02-16 to present | Belarus Relays Unknown |
Increase of relay users in Belarus.
graph mailing list post |
| 2018-12-20 to present | Sudan |
Protests and social media blocks in Sudan.
relay graph Access Now post Psiphon users |
| 2018-09-26 to present | fte |
Outage of default FTE bridge 128.105.214.162:8080.
comment |
| 2018-09-26 to present | fte |
Outage of default FTE bridge 128.105.214.163:8080.
comment |
| 2018-07-28 to present | Turkey Relays Unknown |
Another jump of relay users in Turkey, from 5k to about 30k.
relay graph bridge graph |
| 2018-07-01 to present | Uganda |
A social media tax takes effect in Uganda. The government pressures ISPs to block VPNs.
relay graph bridge graph BBC article AllAfrica article OONI report |
| 2018-06-20 to present | Venezuela |
Venezuela's largest ISP, CANTV, blocks direct access to Tor and the IP addresses of default bridges. meek and non-default bridges are reported to work.
ticket mailing list post Access Now report |
| 2018-04-30 to present | Iran |
Iranian ISPs block Telegram.
ticket article relay graph bridge graph Psiphon users |
| 2018-01-05 to present |
Outage of the op-hk OnionPerf instance.
op-hk graph |
|
| 2017-12-04 to present |
DDoS attack creates load on the network.
tor-relays thread relay graph summary post ticket |
|
| 2017-08-07 to present | Congo, The Democratic Republic of the |
The Democratic Republic of the Congo orders a block of social media services.
article relay graph bridge graph |
| 2017-02-10 to present | OR exit |
Measurement error from bandwidth authority causes decrease in measured bandwidth in Europe.
mailing list post |
| 2016-12-15 to present | Congo, The Democratic Republic of the |
The Democratic Republic of the Congo orders a block of social media services.
article relay graph bridge graph |
| 2016-11-03 to present | Turkey |
Turkey blocks Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp.
article |
| 2016-10-25 to present | Egypt OR Relays |
Egypt blocks Tor directory authorities and public relays by TCP RST. Bridges work.
OONI report |