I'd like to think that I've been making good with both the economic leverage that came my way thanks to Onion Browser, and through the code and community contributions that I've tried to give back along the way.īut selling an app inherently puts up a barrier to user adoption - not for users who simply don’t want to pay for software, but rather for those users who cannot pay for the software. Over the years that income has also given me the economic freedom to continue working on side projects that have a positive impact in the world, and not have to think twice before working on such things or helping teach others about digital security, privacy, and civic data - almost always pro bono. The extra income has been reliable - and definitely relied on - as part of the change. For now, let me give you a short version: in the time since Onion Browser was first released, my partner and I (and our cats) moved from Spokane to New York so that I could join the investigative newsroom at ProPublica.

I hope to eventually have a full conversation about the economic factors behind my work on Onion Browser and my reliance on the income I’d been receiving from sales of Onion Browser. Given recent events, many believe it’s more important than ever to exercise and support freedom of speech, privacy rights, and digital security I think now is as good a time as ever to make Onion Browser more accessible to everyone.Īlthough the Onion Browser source code has always been freely available and under an open source license, I initially set the purchase price as a way to recoup the $100 annual Apple Developer membership cost, never believing that it’d become quite as popular as it did.

As of today, Onion Browser is available free of charge there’s now a Patreon page and other ways to support the project. Over four years ago, Onion Browser - one of the first Tor browsers for iOS, and certainly the first open source one - launched at the price of $0.99.

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