Tor over VPN combines two privacy tools, but it also comes with a few trade-offs.

Both The Onion Routing, or Tor, and virtual private networks, or VPNs, are useful tools for improving your online privacy. While Tor offers stronger pseudo-anonymity and lets you access Onion sites, VPNs are generally faster and more user-friendly. A VPN suffices for most folks who want to stream, stay private while traveling or browse the web away from prying eyes.

However, you don’t necessarily have to choose between Tor and a VPN. Tor over VPN servers let you use Tor and a VPN simultaneously within your VPN app without downloading and setting up the Tor Browser. This adds an extra layer of privacy on top of what a VPN provides while keeping the experience relatively simple.

Although Tor over VPN combines the privacy benefits of both tools and addresses some of Tor’s limitations, it isn’t a holy grail for online privacy. There are still a few things you should know before using Tor VPN servers, including the trust you’re placing in your VPN provider, the impact on your internet speeds and the situations where you may not need Tor at all.

Typically, when you connect to a website or app on the internet, you communicate directly, and that app or site can see your public IP address , which contains your general geographical location. But when you use Tor or a VPN, your internet traffic is first sent through an encrypted tunnel – or a set of tunnels – therefore preventing your internet provider from seeing your internet activity, and websites and apps from viewing your IP address.

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