Getting into Mars Market for the first time

Before you start

You need Tor Browser, not a regular browser with a VPN on top of it. Get it from torproject.org, the actual project site. There are builds for desktop, Android, and iOS.

A VPN is not a substitute. A VPN hides you from your network. Tor hides the site from your network. A .onion address only resolves through the onion protocol, which means it only loads inside Tor Browser. No extension adds that to Chrome or Firefox.

This page walks through the whole first visit. Take it in order.

Step 1. Copy the address, do not type it

Go to the mirrors page (mirrors.html) and pick one of the three current addresses. Use the copy button next to it. Paste into the address bar. Hit enter.

Typing 56 characters by hand is how people end up on a lookalike domain. One wrong character in the middle and you are somewhere else entirely.

Step 2. Wait for the circuit

The first load on a fresh circuit can take 20 to 60 seconds. A blank page during that window is normal. Do not open a second tab and panic. Do not reload three times in a row. Let the circuit build.

If you have just switched networks, say you moved from Wi-Fi to cellular, give it a full minute before you conclude anything.

Step 3. The anti-phishing gate

When the page finally appears, you will not see the shop. You will see a black card with red monospace text. It prints your own address with six characters masked as asterisks, and a box asking you to type those missing six characters.

Read the printed string. Compare it with your address bar, character by character. The ten-second version: check the first four and the last six. If they match, type the six masked characters into the box and hit Continue.

If the printed string does not match your address bar, you are on a clone. Close the tab, go back, re-check what you pasted, and try again from the mirrors page.

Step 4. The login page

After the gate, you land on the login screen. Username, password, an icon captcha that says "Click on the least repeated icon to continue", and a "Verify Mirror" button that opens the PGP-signed mirror list. There is also a light/dark theme toggle in the top right; light is the default, the moon button switches to dark.

The "Verify Mirror" button is worth using on a first visit. It shows you the signed list of addresses, so you can confirm the one you are on is in it.

Step 5. After you are in

The onion stays in the address bar the whole time you use the market. If you ever see a different address, or an http:// clearnet domain, you have left the market. Stop, close the tab, come back through the mirrors page.

That is the whole first visit. The next time it takes two minutes, because the circuit is warm and you skip the gate if you already passed it in the same session.

One more thing

This directory publishes the addresses and makes no network requests to the onions. It does not check whether they are up. If the mirrors page lists three addresses and all three stall, that is covered on the troubleshooting page.