Tor Project Keeps Mullvad Collaboration, Pauses Co-Branding

The Tor Project says it will continue its technical collaboration with Mullvad, despite community criticism over a political donation by a Mullvad co-founder. The project says ending the work would harm communities that rely on its privacy tools.

In a statement published on October 9, Tor said it strongly opposes rhetoric that threatens human rights but must balance its principles with practical considerations. It said the collaboration has improved the Tor Browser codebase and helped create a safer environment to test new features. Work on Mullvad Browser will also continue.

Tor is scaling back the public-facing relationship. It has paused proactive co-branding with Mullvad, halted joint promotion and updated language on its own channels to avoid implying endorsement of Mullvad’s leadership or values. The project acknowledged that some community members find the benefits to Mullvad difficult to accept and said it must protect its mission and independence.

The two organizations developed an open-source browser that offers Tor network anti-tracking and anti-fingerprinting features without requiring users to route traffic through Tor’s slower onion nodes. Tor says work to protect online privacy, free speech and access to information is severely under-resourced, and acknowledged that its decision carries a cost to trust for some in its community.