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Onionsite managers

This pages tracks support for onionsite managers, applications helping to setup and maintain Onion Service sites.

For the core Onion Service implementations, check this other document.

Under writing

This document is still incomplete and lacks many features.

Progress in being tracked on ticket tpo/onion-services/ecosystem#36.

Last updated on 2025-11-13.

Onionspray and Oniongroove

Onionspray and Oniongroove are two tools developed within The Tor Project.

While Onionspray is stable, it supports only the legacy C Tor backend.

Oniongroove, in the other hand, is still a prototype, but aims to support both C Tor and the newer Arti as backends, aiding the migration from the legacy backend to the new one.

Feature Onionspray Oniongroove with C Tor Oniongroove with Arti
Stability ✅ Stable N/A ⚠ Prototype, likely to change
Support coverage While C Tor is supported While C Tor is supported Possibly while Arti is supported
Multi-site1 ✅ Implemented Planned ✅ Implemented
Multi-project2 ✅ Implemented Planned Planned
Load balancing ✅ Implemented Planned Planned
Vanguards ❌ Not implemented ❌ Unlikely ✅ Implemented
Single Hop Mode ✅ Implemented Planned Planned
Vanity address generation ✅ Implemented Planned Planned
HTTP-mode3 ❌ Not implemented Planned Planned
HTTPS-mode4 ✅ Implemented Planned ✅ Implemented
HTTP to HTTPS5 ✅ Implemented Planned ✅ Implemented
HTTPS proxy endpoint ✅ Implemented Planned ✅ Implemented
UNIX socket endpoint ❌ Not implemented6 Planned Planned
TCP endpoint ❌ Not implemented Planned Planned
UDP endpoint N/A N/A N/A
Containerization Planned Planned ✅ Implemented
Debian package ❌ Not implemented Considered Considered
CLI for quick setup ✅ Implemented Planned Planned
Automation ✅ Ansible Planned Planned

Legend

Tables in this document uses the same legend from the Implementations page.

Notes

  1. For multi-site, it's considered whether the tool can be used to host more than a single site at the same time. ↩

  2. For multi-project, it's considered whether the tool supports having multiple sets of sites being managed, each set having it's own configuration, and hence it's own Tor daemon instance. ↩

  3. HTTP mode means that it's possible to use the onionsite with HTTP -- without the additional TLS encryption (HTTPS). ↩

  4. HTTPS mode means that it's possible to connect to the onionsite through HTTPS. ↩

  5. The HTTP to HTTPS is the automatic redirection of HTTP requests to the equivalent HTTPS requests. ↩

  6. Onionspray does use UNIX sockets in the connection between the C Tor daemon and the HTTPS proxy, but is does not support a direct UNIX socket connection to the final website endpoint, such as a backend web server providing the actual application. ↩