What is the dark web?
The dark web is a small, encrypted slice of the internet that requires special software to reach. Here's what it actually is, how it differs from the dark net and the deep web, and what you'll find inside.
The dark web is a small, encrypted corner of the internet that you can't reach with Chrome or Safari. Instead of typing an address into a normal browser, you need special software — most commonly the Tor Browser — that routes your traffic through layers of encryption before it reaches a site ending in .onion.
That's it, really. No shadowy underworld. No "levels". Just a different way of reaching a website, designed so that neither your internet provider nor the server operator can easily tell who you are or where you are.
Surface web, deep web, dark web
People often mix up three very different things (we go deeper on this in the dedicated dark web vs deep web guide):
- The surface web is what Google indexes — every public homepage, article and product page you can discover with a search engine.
- The deep web is everything that isn't indexed: your Gmail inbox, your bank dashboard, internal corporate systems, subscription paywalls. It's the majority of the internet by volume, and none of it is spooky.
- The dark web is a tiny slice of the deep web that is deliberately hidden behind anonymity networks. The best-known is Tor, but I2P and Freenet also qualify.
Dark web vs dark net
These two phrases are used almost interchangeably, but there is a subtle distinction. A dark net is the underlying overlay network — the protocol, the relays, the cryptography. The dark web is the collection of websites published over that network. Tor is a dark net; the list of .onion addresses you can reach through it is a dark web.
In practice, most journalists and most readers use "dark web" to mean both, and nobody's going to correct you.
How do you reach it?
For the Tor-based dark web, you download the Tor Browser from the Tor Project. It looks and behaves like Firefox, because it's literally a hardened Firefox build. You open it, type an.onion address, and you're on the dark web.
You can also configure regular apps to route through Tor (via Orbot on Android, for example), but most users stick with the browser because it's been audited, it ships with sensible defaults and it isolates your dark web activity from the rest of your system. For a full walk-through, see how to access the dark web safely.
What actually lives on the dark web?
News gets skewed toward the sensational, so it's worth laying out the boring, legitimate majority first:
- Mainstream newsrooms — The New York Times, BBC News, ProPublica, Deutsche Welle — run
.onionmirrors so readers in censored networks can access them. - Privacy-focused services like Proton Mail, Mullvad VPN and Riseup publish
.onionendpoints for users who don't want to touch the clearnet. - Whistleblowing platforms like SecureDrop and GlobaLeaks are almost exclusively Tor-based, because they're designed to hide the source's identity even from the newsroom.
- Ordinary forums, wikis, search engines and software project mirrors. The Tor Project and the Debian project, for instance, both run hidden services.
Yes, illegal markets and abusive content exist too. They get the headlines because they're newsworthy, but they're a minority of the traffic and easily avoided: they aren't in any directory worth trusting, including this one.
Is using it safe?
Using the Tor Browser to read the BBC's .onion mirror is about as risky as reading the BBC on Chrome. Where things get riskier is when users download files, enable scripts, or click random links from shady index sites. Stick to well-known addresses, never turn off the Tor Browser's default security settings unless you know what you're doing, and assume anything you install from a hidden service is unverified unless you can check a signature.
If you want a starting point, this directory lists only services that are publicly advertised by the organisations behind them, or that have a long-standing reputation on the Tor network.