Mullvad Browser is a free, open-source desktop browser built by the Tor Project from Firefox, with anti-fingerprinting patches, bundled uBlock Origin and no telemetry, designed to pair with a VPN for everyday private browsing.
Mullvad Browser is a desktop web browser that strips out the identifying signals most browsers leak. It is built by the Tor Project on Firefox, carrying the hardening work that makes Tor Browser resistant to fingerprinting, but without routing traffic through the Tor network. You install it, browse normally, and every user presents a near-identical fingerprint: same window metrics, same canvas behaviour, same reported fonts. Trackers are blocked by a single bundled copy of uBlock Origin, deliberately no more, because over-blocking is itself a signature. Sessions start in private mode and cookies do not survive a restart. A VPN supplies the other half by hiding the address.
The division of labour is the part people miss. A browser controls what your machine tells a website; a tunnel controls which address that website sees. Neither substitutes for the other, which is why the project recommends running both rather than choosing. A commercial subscription handles the addressing half, while something like Nostr VPN solves an adjacent problem by linking your own devices into a private mesh. Mullvad Browser itself asks for nothing: no account, no email, no subscription and no telemetry sent back to Sweden. It is funded entirely by the VPN business, so the browser stays free without an advertising model.
The payoff for using Mullvad Browser is that it closes the gap a VPN leaves open. Your tunnel hides the IP, but a browser reporting a unique set of fonts, screen dimensions and graphics quirks still hands over a working identifier, and that is exactly what this build flattens. Because everyone ships similar settings, you blend into a crowd instead of standing out as the one user with an unusual configuration. Nothing is stored between sessions, so a login on a shared machine does not persist. The absence of telemetry means no crash reports or usage pings leave the device. Installation is a download and an unzip, with no account and no payment. The cost is convenience: some sites break under strict defaults, and you will occasionally need to relax a setting.
Key capabilities and highlights.
Canvas output, font lists, timezone, screen size and dozens of other signals are normalised so every user looks identical to a tracking script. Letterboxing pads the window with grey bars so page dimensions cannot act as an identifier, which explains the slightly inset layout.
Mullvad Browser starts from Firefox and applies the Tor Browser patch set, so the hardening is work that has been reviewed for years rather than a home-grown fork. Updates arrive on Firefox's release cadence, handled by the same maintainers.
Third-party trackers are filtered by uBlock Origin and nothing else. Extra filter lists or a second anti-tracker extension would make your browser behave differently from everyone else's, so the build deliberately stops at the default configuration and blocks requests at the network layer.
Session data is discarded on exit, so a borrowed or shared machine does not remember where you signed in. Third-party cookies are isolated into separate jars while you browse, which limits cross-site tracking inside a single session without breaking the sites you actually use.
Firefox's usage reporting, crash pings and experiment features are removed rather than hidden behind a toggle. Nothing about your browsing reaches the vendor, which also means the team tunes the product from bug reports and audits instead of behavioural data.
The browser does not detect, require or promote a particular provider, so it runs behind a paid tunnel, a self-hosted setup or no VPN at all. The project is explicit that without a tunnel your IP address stays visible, and it recommends pairing the two rather than treating either as sufficient.
The source is published and the download costs nothing, funded by the VPN side of the business instead of advertising or data sales. Anyone can read the patches or rebuild the package, which matters when the entire claim is that the software does not send anything home.
Mullvad Browser ships packages for supported releases of all three desktop platforms, downloaded directly instead of through an app store, so no platform account is involved. On Linux the same build runs across common distributions without adding a separate repository.
Browse historical releases and previous builds.
Common questions about Mullvad Browser.
Yes. There is no purchase, no subscription and no account requirement. The browser is funded by the company's VPN revenue, and the source code is public, so the download costs nothing whether or not you are a paying customer.
No. Mullvad Browser does not check for a subscription or connect to any service, so it works with another VPN provider, a self-hosted tunnel or no VPN whatsoever. What changes without a tunnel is your IP address, which remains visible to every site you visit.
No. It carries the same anti-fingerprinting patches and comes from the same developers, but it does not use the Tor network. Traffic leaves through your ordinary connection or your VPN, which makes it faster and less likely to be blocked, at the cost of the anonymity Tor's routing provides.
It does not, and it never claims to. Fingerprint resistance hides what your machine reports about itself; masking the address requires a VPN or similar tunnel in front of the browser.
Linux, macOS and Windows, on supported releases of each. Mullvad Browser is a desktop product, so there are no Android or iOS builds, and phones need a different browser for the same protections.
Strict defaults block third-party requests and isolate cookies, and a handful of sites depend on exactly those behaviours for logins, embedded video or payment widgets. You can relax settings per site when necessary, knowing that the change makes your fingerprint slightly more distinctive.
Cookies and session data are discarded when you close the browser, and private mode is active from the start. Files you deliberately save, such as downloads, remain on disk, so anything sensitive should be removed manually.
A VPN changes the address a site sees; the browser changes what the site can infer from your device. Used alone, each leaves a gap, which is why the project positions the browser as a companion to a tunnel rather than a replacement for one.
Mullvad Browser is a free, open-source desktop browser built by the Tor Project from Firefox, with anti-fingerprinting patches, bundled uBlock Origin and no telemetry, designed to pair with a VPN for everyday private browsing.
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