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Tor Relay Hosting with Unmetered Bandwidth
Unmetered or unlimited bandwidth hosting eliminates the primary cost concern for high-volume Tor relay operators. While standard hosting providers charge per gigabyte transferred, unmetered providers offer a fixed monthly price for a guaranteed port speed without traffic caps. For Tor relays that can sustain hundreds of megabits continuously, this pricing model dramatically reduces operating costs. However, not all unmetered providers tolerate Tor relay operation, and the hosting infrastructure quality varies significantly. This guide covers how to identify Tor-friendly unmetered hosting and configure your relay to maximize the value of an unmetered connection.
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Why Unmetered Bandwidth Matters for Tor Relays
A Tor relay sustaining 500 Mbit/s symmetrically transfers approximately 162 TB per month. At typical cloud provider bandwidth prices of $0.05-0.10 per GB outbound, this equals $8,100-16,200 monthly in bandwidth costs alone, making high-bandwidth relay operation economically impossible without unmetered pricing. Unmetered hosting in relay-friendly jurisdictions typically costs $30-150 per month for 1 Gbit/s port speed, reducing bandwidth costs from prohibitive to manageable. The Tor Project maintains a list of hosting providers known to be Tor-friendly at community.torproject.org/relay/community-resources/good-bad-isps.
Identifying Tor-Friendly Unmetered Providers
Not all unmetered providers tolerate high-volume relay traffic or the abuse reports that exit relays generate. Before committing to a provider, check the Tor Project's Good and Bad ISPs list, search the tor-relays mailing list for operator experiences, and review the provider's acceptable use policy for explicit or implicit prohibition of anonymization tools. Privacy-positive jurisdictions including Iceland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Romania, and Switzerland have established hosting communities that actively support Tor relay operators. Providers in these jurisdictions tend to handle abuse complaints about Tor exit traffic more professionally.
Port Speed vs. Committed Rate Distinctions
Unmetered hosting often specifies a port speed (1 Gbit/s, 10 Gbit/s) rather than a committed information rate. Port speed is the maximum burst capability, while the actual sustained throughput depends on shared infrastructure utilization. Some budget unmetered providers oversell their uplinks. Test sustained throughput with iperf3 from multiple geographic locations before committing. Bandwidth authority measurements will quickly reveal whether your actual capacity matches advertised speeds - if measurements lag far behind your configured BandwidthRate, the provider is overselling.
Configuring RelayBandwidthRate for Unmetered Plans
With unmetered bandwidth, set RelayBandwidthRate to 80% of your sustained test throughput to leave headroom for traffic spikes. RelayBandwidthBurst can equal the port speed maximum. For a 1 Gbit/s port sustaining 700 Mbit/s in iperf3 tests: RelayBandwidthRate 560 MBytes and RelayBandwidthBurst 1 GBytes. Monitor actual bandwidth usage with iftop or vnstat to verify you are not approaching provider thresholds. Some unmetered providers cap per-customer traffic at a multiple of the stated port speed per day, so configure Tor's BandwidthRate below this daily implied cap.
IPv6 Configuration on Unmetered Plans
Many unmetered providers include IPv6 connectivity at no additional cost. Enabling IPv6 on your Tor relay doubles its reachability and supports clients using IPv6-only paths. Configure ORPort [::]:443 and ORPort 0.0.0.0:443 in your torrc to listen on both IPv4 and IPv6. Set Address to your IPv4 address and OutboundBindAddressExit to specify which source address Tor uses for exit connections. Verify IPv6 is advertised in your relay descriptor by checking metrics.torproject.org relay detail page. IPv6-capable relays are preferred by clients on IPv6 networks, increasing your traffic volume without additional cost on unmetered plans.
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