VPN, proxy, or Tor: which one actually hides your IP

All three of these tools do the same basic trick: websites see their IP instead of yours. The difference is who you’re trusting, what breaks, and how much speed you give up. Here’s the short version: most people who want one of these want a VPN. Proxies are for narrow technical jobs. Tor is for when the stakes are genuinely high.

VPN: you’re moving your trust, not removing it

A VPN wraps all your traffic in an encrypted tunnel to the VPN company’s server, and the internet sees that server’s IP. Your internet provider can no longer see which sites you visit. The VPN company now can. That’s the deal people miss: a VPN doesn’t make you anonymous, it changes who holds the logs.

That trade is still worth it in plenty of cases — public Wi-Fi, providers that sell browsing data, region-locked content, hiding your IP from game lobbies. Just pick a provider with an audited no-logs policy and accept that “audited” is the best guarantee you’ll get. Speed cost is usually 5–20%, barely noticeable on a decent connection.

Proxy: one app, no encryption, don’t overthink it

A proxy forwards traffic for a single app — usually your browser — and most don’t encrypt anything. Your provider still sees everything. Free web proxies are worse than nothing: you’re routing your traffic through a stranger’s server, and many inject ads or harvest credentials.

The legitimate uses are narrow and mostly professional: scraping, testing how a site looks from another country, managing multiple accounts. If you’re asking “should I get a proxy for privacy,” the answer is no — get the VPN.

Tor: real anonymity, real cost

Tor bounces your traffic through three volunteer relays, each knowing only the previous and next hop. No single relay knows both who you are and where you’re going. That’s a genuinely different design from a VPN — there’s no company to subpoena.

The costs are just as real. Tor is slow — think 2005 internet. Video barely works. Many sites block Tor exits outright or bury you in CAPTCHAs. And using Tor stands out: your provider can’t see what you do on it, but they can see that you use it.

If you’re a journalist protecting a source or a person evading a dangerous ex, Tor (with the Tor Browser, unmodified) is the right tool. If you’re annoyed that Netflix caught your VPN, it isn’t.

The check that takes ten seconds

Whichever you use, verify it’s working: load this site before and after connecting. If the IP at the top of the page didn’t change, your traffic isn’t going where you think. IPv6 leaks are the classic gotcha — some VPNs tunnel IPv4 but let IPv6 walk right past. If the tool shows an IPv6 address while your VPN is on, that’s a leak worth fixing in settings.