Best Tor Websites for Your First Week: A Day-by-Day Itinerary for New Users
Day one: the Tor Project's own pages, the first of the best tor websites you should know
Start where the software comes from. The Tor Project's website is the first of the best tor websites for a reason that has nothing to do with taste: it is the canonical source for the browser, its documentation and the answers to most questions a beginner will have. Spend day one there, in Tor Browser, doing three things. First, confirm you are actually using Tor. The Tor Project runs a check page, linked from its site, that tells you whether your connection is coming through the network. Load it and read the result. It is the first time you verify rather than assume. Second, read the user manual, particularly the sections on the security level and on onion services. The manual explains the three security settings and what each disables, and describes the onion icon and Onion-Location. Reading it now means you will recognise these features when you meet them. Third, watch what the browser does when you visit the Tor Project's clearnet site. The project supports Onion-Location, so Tor Browser will offer to switch to the onion version, or will switch automatically if you have set it to. Accept, look at the address bar, and notice the 56-character address and the onion icon. You have just obtained your first onion address with certificate-backed provenance, without a directory, and that experience is the template for everything that follows. Skill for the day: set the security level to Safest using the shield icon, and leave it there for the rest of the week.
Day two: privacy tools, and the best tor browser sites for learning to verify a login page
Day two moves to services you might actually use, and the best tor browser sites for this are privacy-focused providers whose onion services are documented on their own clearnet help pages. DuckDuckGo, the browser's default search engine, runs one. Proton documents onion addresses for its mail and related products. Other encrypted email and messaging providers do the same. The exercise is to reach each one the right way and to notice how it differs from the wrong way. 1. Open the provider's clearnet site in Tor Browser and look for the Onion-Location prompt. If it appears, accept it. 2. If it does not, find the provider's support or help pages and search them for onion or Tor. Legitimate providers document the address plainly. 3. Bookmark the address with the name of the provider, the words Onion-Location or help page, and the date. 4. Now, separately, search a general search engine for the provider's onion address and look at what comes back: directories, forum posts, blog lists. Compare one of those addresses, in full, against your verified bookmark. Sometimes they match. Sometimes they do not. Either way you have seen for yourself why the source matters. Do not log into anything today. The point is to practise obtaining and comparing addresses for services where logging in will eventually matter, so that when you do, the habit of checking the full address against a verified bookmark is already formed. A privacy provider's login page is the most valuable thing a clone operator can imitate, and this exercise is the defence.
Day three: news mirrors, the best tor links for readers under censorship
Day three is about the sector that made onion services respectable, and the best tor links in it are news mirrors published by the outlets themselves. ProPublica, The New York Times, the BBC and other organisations run onion versions of their sites, each announced publicly and each documented on the outlet's clearnet site. Some support Onion-Location; others publish the address on a page about Tor or about reaching the site under censorship. Visit two or three. Notice several things. The mirror works at Safest, because it is a news site and news is text. It carries no advertising trackers, or far fewer. Its address is long, random-looking and often begins with a recognisable prefix the outlet generated deliberately. And it was trivially easy to find without any directory, because the outlet wanted you to find it. Then do the same for a secure submission system. Many newsrooms run SecureDrop, a whistleblower platform maintained by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and publish the address on a clearnet page with instructions. You do not need to submit anything; the exercise is to see how an organisation that takes source safety seriously publishes an onion address, with warnings, instructions and often a fingerprint, and to contrast that with how a directory does it, with none of those things. Skill for the day: for each mirror, record in the bookmark description exactly where on the clearnet site you found the address. Six months from now, that note is what will let you tell your verified bookmark from a directory's guess.
Day four: software and signatures, using the top tor links from projects to learn verification
Day four teaches the single most valuable technical skill on the network, signature verification, and the top tor links for practising it belong to free software projects that publish signed files. The Tor Project itself is the natural teacher: it signs every Tor Browser release and documents the verification procedure in detail on its support site. Work through that procedure once, slowly, even if you already have the browser installed. 1. Download the current Tor Browser installer for your platform and its .asc signature file from the Tor Project's site. 2. Install a PGP tool following the project's guide for your operating system. 3. Import the Tor Browser Developers signing key and confirm its fingerprint matches the one published on the project's site. 4. Run the verification command and read the result. A good signature is a mathematical statement that the file is exactly what the project released, and once you have seen one you will understand why every other kind of assurance on this network is weaker. Our Useful Resources page has a general walkthrough that applies to any signed file. Then, if you have a use for it, look at how other projects publish onion mirrors. Debian documents onion mirrors for its package archives and websites, and the packages fetched through them verify against the same keys as on the clearnet. The lesson is that software from an onion mirror is exactly as trustworthy as its signature, no more and no less, and that the mirror's address, like every other, comes from the project's own documentation.
Day five: civil society and archives, top onion links that ask nothing of you
Day five is a quieter day. The top onion links in the civil society and archival sectors are informational, read-only and undemanding, which makes them a good place to practise reading an unfamiliar onion service critically without any risk. Digital rights and press freedom organisations, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Freedom of the Press Foundation among them, have documented onion presences, as have some libraries and archival projects mirroring public-domain collections. Find two or three through their clearnet sites, as on previous days. Then, on each, run the arrival checklist described elsewhere on this site. Does the page render at Safest. Does it ask you to lower the security level, register, or download anything. Is there an about page, and does it say plainly who runs the service and why. Do internal links stay on the same address. Is there any advertising, and if so, is it labelled. You should find that every one of these services passes every check, and that is the point: you are learning what a well-run service looks like so that a badly run one will stand out later. A scenario for the day: after the third civil society site, open a random directory of onion links, choose an entry claiming to be an archive, and run the same checklist without entering anything. Note how many lines it fails, or how many you simply cannot answer. Then close it. The contrast is the lesson, and you learned it with nothing at stake.
Days six and seven: building your bookmark system around every top onion website you verified
The last two days are about consolidation, because a week of visiting the best sites is wasted if the addresses are lost or muddled. Every top onion website you reached this week came from an accountable source, and your bookmarks should preserve that. On day six, open Tor Browser's bookmark manager and create a small folder structure: Verified for addresses that came from operators' own channels, Channels for the clearnet pages where you found them, and Pending for anything you encounter later that has not been checked. Move each of this week's bookmarks into Verified, and check that every one carries the service name, the source and the date. Add the clearnet pages you used to Channels. This is the structure you will return to when an address stops working, and it is described in more detail in our article on managing tor links in Tor Browser. On day seven, export the bookmarks and store the export somewhere encrypted, then read back through the week. You have used the check page, the manual, Onion-Location, documented help pages, published mirrors, signature verification, an arrival checklist and a provenance-preserving bookmark system. You have not used a directory, a wiki, a forum recommendation or a search result as a source of any address. A scenario: a month later, a friend sends this reader a link to a list of top onion websites. The reader recognises three names, checks the list's addresses against Verified, finds two differ, and explains to the friend why. The week's itinerary has become a habit.
The best sites were the ones that taught you the network
The best tor websites for a first week were never a secret list; they were the Tor Project's own pages, documented privacy services, published news mirrors, signed software from projects, and the informational sites of organisations that want to be found. Each one was chosen because it teaches something: how to confirm you are on Tor, how Onion-Location hands you an address you can trust, how a serious organisation publishes an onion address, what a signature proves, what a well-run service looks like on arrival, and how to keep what you have learned in a form that survives. By the end of the week you should have a short Verified folder, a Channels folder that tells you where each address came from, and a set of reflexes: Safest by default, addresses from operators only, full comparison before any login, signatures for any file that matters, and a checklist for any unfamiliar page. Those reflexes are worth more than any list, because they work for services that do not yet exist. One step to take today, if you are on day one: open Tor Browser, load the Tor Project's site, accept the Onion-Location prompt, and look at the address bar. That single moment, an onion address obtained from the organisation that owns it, is the whole week in miniature, and everything else is practice.
Frequently asked questions
what should a beginner visit first in tor browser?
The Tor Project's own site and its connection check page, then its user manual. Accepting the Onion-Location prompt on the project's site gives a first onion address with verifiable provenance, and the manual explains the security levels and onion features before they matter.
how do i know an onion address is the real one for a service?
Obtain it from the operator's own clearnet site, through the Onion-Location prompt or a documented help page, and bookmark it with the source and date. Compare any address from a directory, forum or search result against that bookmark in full before trusting it.
which security level should a new tor user choose?
Safest, set with the shield icon, for at least the first week. It disables JavaScript and several risky features on all sites, and legitimate informational services work fine without them. The Tor Project's manual explains what each level changes.
why should i learn signature verification in my first week?
Because a good PGP signature is the only assurance on the network that is a mathematical guarantee rather than a judgement. Practising on Tor Browser's own signed releases, following the Tor Project's guide, prepares you for any signed file you meet later.
how should i keep the onion bookmarks i collect?
In Tor Browser's bookmark manager, in a Verified folder for addresses from operators' own channels, a Channels folder for the clearnet pages where you found them, and a Pending folder for anything unchecked. Name each with the service, the source and the date, and store exports encrypted.