proxy-scraper

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Install · Live list · Check states · For AI agents · Proxy server · Recipes · Options · FAQ · All docs

Proxy checks you can inspect: what passed, what failed, and when. proxy-scraper collects public HTTP, SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 proxies from hundreds of lists, runs up to four checks on each one and keeps the outcome of each check for the proxies it lists (for the rest it counts how each check ended), so "working" is something you can look at instead of a label you have to trust.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/b99c1d8f-5bce-4a52-a8a9-b9c2c726301b

21 seconds · real interface, example numbers, documentation IPs · mp4

Try it – no install needed, uvx comes with uv (pipx run does the same):

uvx proxy-scraper-cli --pick 3 --verify               # up to 3 proxies from the hourly list that pass right now, from your network
uvx proxy-scraper-cli --diagnose socks5://HOST:PORT   # one proxy, check by check: what it did and what it didn't

A real terminal recording, made against six simulated proxies on localhost (reproduce it). It shows how results are reported. It measures nothing about public proxies.

The package is proxy-scraper-cli on PyPI (the plain name is taken). Once installed, the command is proxy-scraper. --verify and --diagnose need version 1.30 or newer.

Three ways to get proxies, and what "checked" means for each:

What you get

• Every check has an outcome you can read. passed, failed, unavailable or skipped, with a reason code, the target and the time, in the terminal, in JSON and from Python. A check that didn't run is never shown as passed, and a check target that is down doesn't turn the proxies checked against it into failures. → Check states

• Fresh when it matters. --pick --verify checks a few proxies from your own network, usually in seconds. --recheck does the same for a list of your own, and --diagnose tells you why one proxy doesn't work.

• More than a list. A rotating local proxy server, a Python API, an MCP server for AI agents, Docker, and exports for curl, proxychains, Clash and sing-box.

What it can't do. Free proxies are run by strangers, and of one hour's list only about a quarter is on the list again a day later. A pass is one measurement, from one network, against test targets: it is not a promise for the next hour or for the site you care about. The HTTPS check is a verified TLS connection to one test host, not a security rating. Use free proxies for public data and testing, never for logins, payments or anything personal. → What the numbers show and what they don't · Why free proxies fail · How it compares · Who runs free proxies

Only want the lists? You don't need this tool: free-proxy-list has them as plain files per protocol and country, rebuilt about every hour. Or straight from here: all.txt · http.txt · socks4.txt · socks5.txt · proxies.json · more formats

Used by: the hourly list is a built-in source of monosans/proxy-scraper-checker and gfpcom/free-proxy-list.

Install

With pipx (recommended – gives you a proxy-scraper command in its own environment):

pipx install proxy-scraper-cli
proxy-scraper

With Homebrew on macOS and Linux:

brew install maximilianfeix/tap/proxy-scraper

The formula follows each release within about a day.

Docker, pip, a faster event loop, the latest main, tab completion and where state and results are stored: every other way to install.

Started without arguments, a wizard asks what you are looking for – a preset (find everything, browsing, maximum anonymity, fast, a few right now, recheck, proxy server right away, …) or step by step: the wizard and its presets.

Keys: ↑↓ select · Space toggle · 1–9 jump · Enter next · Esc back · q quit. In scripts and cron jobs the wizard never shows up – pass options or -y.

Related MCP server: Oculr MCP

Live proxy list

Don't want to scan yourself? About every hour GitHub Actions runs the tool and publishes the hits to the proxy-list branch – every entry passed the first request, the second request and the content check in the last run (the HTTPS test is recorded per entry, not required), best first: fast ones that are likely to still be up come on top.

Just want the lists? They also live in a repository of their own, maximilianfeix/free-proxy-list – one list per protocol, per country and per site, updated every hour, with the numbers of the last run on the front page. Watch or star it to keep it at hand. Other tools pull it too: monosans/proxy-scraper-checker and gfpcom/free-proxy-list use it as a built-in source.

→ Browse it on the website – search, filter by type, country, HTTPS, provider and latency, see how long each proxy has been on the list and in how many of the week's runs, copy or download exactly the proxies you need.

Every protocol and country also has its own page with a plain download, e.g. SOCKS5 or Germany (country/de/proxies.txt).

curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/maximilianfeix/proxy-scraper/proxy-list/socks5.txt | head

Where they come from: which free proxy lists actually work ranks every source of the hourly runs – how many proxies each one lists, how many passed every check and the share. The same as data: sources.json.

Over time: every day the first run's proxies.json is kept for good as a gzipped asset of the release of that year, like snapshots-2026 – proxies-2026-09-28.json.gz and so on, for anyone who wants to look at free proxies over weeks and months.

Every file is also on GitHub Pages, which sits behind a CDN, isn't rate limited like raw.githubusercontent and sends CORS headers, so it works straight from the browser: https://proxy-scraper.de/socks5.txt. jsDelivr works too, but can lag behind by a few hours.

Or let the tool start from it: proxy-scraper --recheck live downloads the list and checks it again from your network – well under a minute instead of a full scan. How many still work from your network differs a lot from the list's own count, which is the point of checking again. Add --serve and the result is a rotating proxy.

Check states

Every check of a proxy ends in one of four states. They are in proxies.json, in the CSV, in --pick --json, in --diagnose, in the Python API (result.checks) and in the MCP results.

Two rules follow from that:

• A check that didn't run is never passed. Before 1.30, a run without a reachable second target kept every proxy as if it had been confirmed, and a missing reference page looked like "content unchanged".

• A check target that is down doesn't fail the proxies checked against it. When a second request, a content request that returned a different page, or an HTTPS test fails, the tool asks the target directly: at most once every 3 seconds however many proxies fail in between, and a "down" answer is reused for 10 seconds. If the target doesn't answer, the proxy's check is unavailable, not failed. For the first request a scan does it differently: it watches the target, switches to another one and checks the affected proxies again. --diagnose and --pick --verify have no such watcher and ask directly, as for the later checks. Two things are never asked about, because the target did answer: a second site that saw a different exit IP, and a proxy that could not be connected to in the first place.

The checks, what each passed does and doesn't mean, the fields and every reason code: docs/check-states.md.

For AI agents (MCP)

proxy-scraper-mcp is an MCP server: Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, Codex and any other MCP client can ask for working proxies and load pages through them.

Things to ask your agent: "Load bbc.com/news as seen from the UK", "Give me 5 SOCKS5 proxies from Germany that aren't in a datacenter", "Check which of these sites block free proxies".

Needs uv – it fetches a suitable Python by itself if yours is older than 3.10. Claude Code:

claude mcp add proxy-scraper -- uvx --python ">=3.10" --from "proxy-scraper-cli[mcp]" proxy-scraper-mcp

Claude Desktop, Cursor and most other clients – add this to the MCP config (Claude Desktop: Settings → Developer → Edit Config, Cursor: ~/.cursor/mcp.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "proxy-scraper": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--python", ">=3.10", "--from", "proxy-scraper-cli[mcp]", "proxy-scraper-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

VS Code, Codex, Docker, or without uv: setup for every other client. It's also in the official MCP registry as io.github.maximilianfeix/proxy-scraper, so clients that browse the registry can install it from there.

The server tells agents what it tells you: free proxies are run by strangers, so no logins, cookies or personal data through them. Local and private addresses are refused, and results go to proxy-scraper's data folder, not into the project you're working in.

Examples

# 50 proxies that can do HTTPS – then stop
proxy-scraper --want 50 --https-only

# only Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the 20,000 most promising candidates
proxy-scraper --country DE,AT,CH -l 20000

# fast elite SOCKS5 proxies
proxy-scraper --types socks5 --anonymity elite --max-latency 1500

# 20 proxies that really reach Google AND Discord
proxy-scraper --target google.com --target discord.com --want 20

# only recheck the last hits (plus history) – takes seconds
proxy-scraper --recheck

# wizard with defaults – it keeps what you already passed
proxy-scraper -i --country DE

# which sources deliver the most?
proxy-scraper --list-sources

Running from a clone? Replace proxy-scraper with python3 proxy_scraper.py.

From Python

from proxyscraper import check_proxies, find_proxies

if __name__ == "__main__":  # needed on macOS/Windows, the parser uses a process pool
    for p in find_proxies(want=20, https=True, countries=["DE", "NL"], no_datacenter=True):
        print(p.url, p.latency, p.country, p.org)

    alive = check_proxies(["socks5://1.2.3.4:1080", "5.6.7.8:3128"])  # your own list

Same run as the command line – sources, learning, every check, result files – just without terminal output. Each result has url, latency, exit_ip, https, anonymity, country, asn, org and hosting. There's an async version of both (find_proxies_async, check_proxies_async).

Don't need a fresh scan? live_proxies takes the live list instead – no checks, one download, done in about a second:

import itertools, requests
from proxyscraper import live_proxies

proxies = live_proxies(types=["socks5"], https=True, min_uptime=90)  # the reliable ones this week
pool = itertools.cycle(p.url for p in proxies)
r = requests.get("https://api.ipify.org", proxies={"https": next(pool)}, timeout=15)  # pip install "requests[socks]"

Same filters as find_proxies, plus min_uptime, works_on (["google"], "reddit", "amazon", "instagram", "tiktok", "discord") and limit. Every result also has uptime_24h, uptime_7d, first_seen, up_for_hours and sites.

Or let the library do the retrying: ProxyRotator loads a URL through the list and moves on to the next proxy when one fails, and proxy_url() gives requests, httpx, Playwright or Scrapy one local address that rotates behind the scenes – Python API: rotating through the list.

Rotating proxy server

A list is nice – but usually you just want to enter one proxy address and have something behind it that keeps trying:

proxy-scraper --recheck --serve     # recheck the last hits, then go – takes seconds

curl -x http://127.0.0.1:8899 https://api.ipify.org              # a different IP every time
curl -x socks5h://127.0.0.1:8899 https://api.ipify.org           # SOCKS5 on the same port
curl -x http://country-de:x@127.0.0.1:8899 https://api.ipify.org # only German exits
curl -x http://session-cart42:x@127.0.0.1:8899 https://shop.example  # same proxy for this session
curl http://127.0.0.1:8899/__proxy-scraper/status                # pool and counters as JSON
curl http://127.0.0.1:8899/__proxy-scraper/metrics               # the same for Prometheus/Grafana

Like commercial rotating proxies, the username carries what you want: country-XX, type-http|socks4|socks5 and session-NAME, combinable (country-us-type-socks5-session-a). It works for HTTP (Proxy-Authorization) and SOCKS5 (username/password auth). By default the password is ignored and the server only listens on 127.0.0.1.

To reach it from other machines, give it a password – every client then has to send it, over HTTP and SOCKS5 alike, and the status page wants it as Basic auth:

export PROXY_SCRAPER_SERVE_PASSWORD=$(openssl rand -hex 16)   # the env var keeps it out of `ps`
proxy-scraper --recheck --serve --serve-host 0.0.0.0
curl -x "http://country-de:$PROXY_SCRAPER_SERVE_PASSWORD@your-server:8899" https://api.ipify.org

Without a password the server refuses to start on any address but 127.0.0.1: that would be an open proxy for anyone who reaches the port (Docker publishes ports past host firewalls like ufw). If a firewall or -p 127.0.0.1:… already keeps others out, say so with --serve-open. The ready-made compose.yaml starts the server in Docker from the live list, with a password, a health check and learned state in a volume: put PROXY_PASSWORD=… into .env, then docker compose up -d.

Rotation strategies, sticky sessions, failover, background refill and the live dashboard: docs/proxy-server.md.

Proxy pool API

Some programs want a proxy address, not a proxy – to hand it to a browser, a worker or a queue. The same port answers plain HTTP requests with one:

curl http://127.0.0.1:8899/get                          # one proxy as JSON, chosen like a connection would be
curl "http://127.0.0.1:8899/get?country=DE&https=1&format=txt"   # → http://203.0.113.7:8080
curl "http://127.0.0.1:8899/all?protocol=socks5&limit=20"        # the 20 best SOCKS5 proxies
curl "http://127.0.0.1:8899/report?proxy=203.0.113.7:8080&ok=0"  # it failed you – three times and it's out

All endpoints, filters and what's compatible with jhao104/proxy_pool: Proxy pool API.

Discord and Telegram bot

The live list can also come to you: bot/ is a Discord bot that posts every run into a server – a summary with the fastest proxies, the full lists per protocol as files, and slash commands like /proxies type:socks5 country:DE https:true. It sets up its own read-only channels when you invite it, and a GitHub Action deploys it to a server as a systemd service. The same process answers on Telegram too: /proxy de socks5 for one proxy with a curl line, /proxies 10 us https for a short list. Setup in bot/README.md.

Documentation

Everything that used to be further down this README now has its own page – all docs:

Features

What the tool does, check by check and feature by feature: How it works → Features.

Why not just download a list?

A list tells you what worked for its author when it was built. What the tool adds: How it works → Why not just download a list? · how it compares.

How it works

Sources, collecting, prioritizing, the checks, countries and providers, blocklists, learning: docs/how-it-works.md. Your own lists with --source: recipes.

Output

Every run gets its own folder; results/latest.txt always names the newest one – the layout is in docs/options.md.

Recipes

requests, httpx, aiohttp, Scrapy, Selenium, proxychains, Clash / Mihomo, sing-box, PAC, Proxifier, Burp Suite / ZAP / mitmproxy, pipes, a GitHub workflow, Windows: docs/recipes.md.

Options

Every option in one table: docs/options.md. Everything else: proxy-scraper --help

GitHub Actions

The workflows that test, lint, build the hourly list and release: docs/how-it-works.md. To use proxies in your own workflow: the GitHub Action.

FAQ

Who runs free proxies – and should you use them? · almost nothing gets through · Windows · fewer proxies than other lists · logins · how fresh the list is · is it safe: docs/faq.md.

Roadmap

What's next is in the open issues – ideas and wishes are welcome as an issue. During Hacktoberfest there are beginner-friendly issues with pointers on where to start. What shipped in each version: docs/roadmap.md.

Contributing

Bug reports, new sources and pull requests are very welcome – see CONTRIBUTING.md, and docs/ARCHITECTURE.md for how the pieces fit together. The short version:

pip install -e ".[dev]"
python3 -m pytest          # runs offline – fake proxies on localhost
ruff check .
python3 docs/make_demo.py  # regenerate the images in this README

The project structure, file by file, is in How it works.

Community

Questions, ideas and things you built with it go to Discussions – bugs to the issues. If proxy-scraper saves you time, a ⭐ helps others find it.

Thanks to everyone who helped build it – new sources, countries, Python 3.14, examples and more:

Want to join? Beginner-friendly issues say where to start.

From the same author: dejabuilt, an agent skill that checks GitHub before you build – it tells you whether a project idea already exists, with the numbers.

Acknowledgements

proxy-scraper stands on the work of the people who publish free proxy lists. Thanks to everyone listed in sources.json, and especially to

• monosans/proxy-scraper-checker and gfpcom/free-proxy-list, whose curated source collections are read as meta sources

• Textualize/rich, which draws the whole terminal UI

• IP Geolocation by DB-IP – the free country database (CC BY 4.0) used for offline country lookups

• httpbin, checkip.amazonaws.com, ifconfig.me, ipinfo.io, wtfismyip.com, ident.me and ip-api.com, used as check targets and for country lookups

Disclaimer

This tool only collects publicly listed proxies and checks whether they work. You are responsible for how you use them – respect the terms of the sites you visit and the laws where you live.

Made in Germany by @maximilianfeix · MIT License · Changelog · Security · Contributing

If proxy-scraper saves you time, a ⭐ helps others find it.