Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security.


The best free alternative to GNUnet is Tor, which is also Open Source. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 50 alternatives to GNUnet and loads of them is free so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting free alternatives to GNUnet are Matrix, I2P, Hyphanet and IPFS.
Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security.


Open standard protocol enabling decentralized, encrypted instant messaging, VoIP signaling, IoT device connectivity, and persistent data management across federated servers without central control or single points of failure, bridging communication platforms.


The I2P network provides strong privacy protections for communication over the Internet. Many activities that would risk your privacy on the public Internet can be conducted anonymously inside I2P.




Hyphanet (former Freenet) is free software which lets you anonymously share files, browse and publish "freesites".



IPFS is a global, versioned, peer-to-peer filesystem. It combines ideas from Git, BitTorrent, Kademlia, SFS, and the web. It is like a single bittorrent swarm, exchanging git objects. IPFS provides an interface as simple as the HTTP web, but with permanence built in.




Snowflake is a system to defeat internet censorship. People who are censored can use Snowflake to access the internet. Their connection goes through Snowflake proxies, which are run by volunteers.




ZeroNet uses cryptography (Bitcoin library) and BitTorrent DHT (centralized trackers) to build a distributed censorship-resistant network.







Arti is a project to produce an embeddable, production-quality implementation of the Tor anonymity protocols in the Rust programming language.

Lokinet is a decentralised onion router that uses Oxen service nodes as relays, giving Lokinet the same market-based Sybil attack resistance as the Oxen blockchain. Lokinet supports web browsing, onion-routed real-time voice communications, and other applications.

A proof-of-concept scalable IPv6 meshnet, featuring end-to-end encryption, a unique spanning tree routing algorithm and aiming to implement novel backpressure routing metrics.

I2P (Invisible Internet Protocol) is a universal anonymous network layer. All communications over I2P are anonymous and end-to-end encrypted, participants don't reveal their real IP addresses.
I think that SS is a proxy/VPN not a decentralized network of connected peers.