A Tor-friendly VPS for relays and onion services

A Tor node falls into a few distinct categories, and the category determines how much attention your server will draw. On a vpscrypto.io VPS you are welcome to run any of the following:

• Middle relays — the safe default. A middle relay only forwards encrypted traffic between other Tor nodes. It never connects to the open internet under your IP, so it almost never generates an abuse complaint. This is the recommended starting point for anyone who wants to run a Tor node and contribute capacity.
• Bridge relays — unlisted entry points that help users in censored networks reach Tor. Bridges are low-profile and, like middle relays, do not expose your IP to arbitrary destinations.
• Onion services — also called hidden services. Your site or application is reachable only through a .onion address, with traffic never leaving the Tor network. There is no exit and no third-party destination, so onion services raise none of the exit-relay concerns.
• Exit relays — permitted, but under the stated policy below. An exit sends Tor traffic out to the open internet under your server's IP, which is what attracts complaints and legal inquiries.

If you are new to this, start with a middle relay or an onion service. Our step-by-step Tor relay setup guide walks through a safe middle-relay configuration and explains the exit case in detail.

We try to be unambiguous so you are not guessing. Middle relays, bridge relays, and onion services are welcome on every tier — they are good for the network and rarely cause us or you any trouble.

Exit relays are permitted but need care. An exit operator should expect abuse notices, should run a reduced exit policy to limit the categories of traffic leaving the IP, and should set a working ContactInfo line so complaints reach a human. We recommend dedicating the server to the relay and keeping personal traffic off it. The setup guide covers a reduced exit policy and the operational hygiene that keeps an exit sustainable.

One floor is absolute and applies to every customer regardless of how the server is used: no CSAM, no weapons trafficking, no terrorism content — no exceptions. That floor is not negotiable and is not a Tor-specific rule; it is the hard line under everything we host. Read the full acceptable-use policy before you deploy an exit so there are no surprises.

Tor is light on CPU and disk but rewards generous bandwidth, and every vpscrypto.io tier includes unlimited traffic on all-NVMe KVM — which removes the metered-bandwidth anxiety that makes relays painful on budget clouds.

• Onion services and small bridges — the Pup (1 vCPU / 1 GB / 25 GB) or Cub (1 vCPU / 2 GB / 40 GB) tier is plenty. An onion service is just your application plus a lightweight Tor process.
• A useful middle relay — the Scout (2 vCPU / 4 GB / 70 GB) at $9/mo is the sweet spot. Tor benefits from spare CPU for crypto operations once a relay starts carrying real traffic, and the Scout has headroom to grow into a fast, advertised relay.
• A high-capacity or exit relay — step up to the Runner (3 vCPU / 6 GB) or Hunter (4 vCPU / 8 GB). More cores let Tor saturate a fast link, since a single relay instance is limited by per-process CPU.

Because traffic is unlimited at every level, you can push as much relay capacity as the CPU allows without watching a meter. Compare the full lineup on the pricing page, and pick a location that suits your goal in the jurisdiction section below.

Hosting an onion service is one of the cleanest privacy setups available, because traffic to a .onion address never leaves the Tor network — there is no exit node, no public IP exposed to visitors, and no DNS or TLS certificate to leak metadata. The service binds to localhost and Tor publishes the descriptor; from the outside, only the onion address exists.

Paying for the underlying VPS without ID keeps the chain consistent end to end. Signup is no-KYC — no document upload, just an email for credential delivery and an optional TOTP second factor. Checkout is an any-coin flow that settles on chain, so no intermediary holds your payment identity; Monero is a first-class option for the strongest payment privacy, alongside BTC, ETH, LTC, USDT, and USDC. Just remember the honest caveat: a private host removes one identity link, but anonymity still depends on how you fund the wallet and how you reach the server.

Where your relay or onion service sits determines whose laws govern it, which matters most for exit operators. We run in eight locations, and our offshore VPS footprint includes free-speech and free-press jurisdictions — Stockholm, Reykjavik, and non-EU Zurich — that many relay operators prefer for their legal posture, alongside value locations in Romania and Bulgaria and our Amsterdam flagship on AMS-IX for raw network capacity.

On notices, our policy is operational, not a claim of legal immunity. We treat routine copyright and abuse complaints as a policy matter and do not action them automatically; we act on valid court orders in the server's jurisdiction. Running relays or onion services within policy will not get your account suspended. This is an operational DMCA-ignored posture, not a promise that content is untouchable — and the hard floor above always overrides it. We launched in May 2026, so we will be plain rather than invent a track record: the policy is the policy, and it is written down on our acceptable-use page.

Choose a tier sized to your workload, pick a location that matches your jurisdiction and latency needs, and pay with the coin you prefer. Deployment takes about 60 seconds after your on-chain payment confirms, and you receive root credentials with your choice of Debian, Ubuntu LTS, AlmaLinux, Rocky, Fedora, Arch, Alpine, or FreeBSD.

From there, follow the Tor relay setup guide for a safe middle-relay configuration, or stand up an onion service in a few minutes on a Pup or Cub. If you intend to run an exit, read the acceptable-use policy first, configure a reduced exit policy, and set a real abuse contact before you advertise the relay.