proxy-scraper

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Install · Live list · For AI agents · Proxy server · How it works · Recipes · Options · FAQ

Most free proxy lists are 95 % dead, and a good part of the rest are honeypots or proxies that inject scripts into your pages. proxy-scraper collects public HTTP, SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 proxies from 700+ sources and keeps only the ones that pass every check. It learns with every run which sources are worth it, and it can turn the result into a single rotating proxy.

In numbers: in one day it ran 3.6 million checks on free proxies – 1.1 % passed, and more than half of the ones that answered failed a second request. What's actually out there →

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

Try it – no install, about five seconds:

uvx proxy-scraper-cli --pick 5 --types socks5     # 5 checked proxies

# or just the plain list
curl -s https://maximilianfeix.github.io/proxy-scraper/socks5.txt | head

uvx comes with uv; pipx run proxy-scraper-cli --pick 5 does the same.

Only want proxies? The lists, rebuilt every hour, best first: all.txt · http.txt · socks4.txt · socks5.txt · proxies.json · by country · more formats

Who runs free proxies – and is it safe to use them? Mostly nobody on purpose: misconfigured servers with an open port, a few deliberately open ones, infected machines, and traps that log or rewrite your traffic. That's why every proxy here has to pass five checks, and why they're for public data and testing – never for logins, payments or anything personal. More on where they come from →

• Install

• Live proxy list

• For AI agents (MCP)

• Features · Why not just download a list?

• Examples

• Recipes

• Rotating proxy server

• Discord and Telegram bot

• How it works

• Output

• Options

• GitHub Actions

• FAQ

• Roadmap · Contributing · Community · Acknowledgements

Install

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

pipx install proxy-scraper-cli
proxy-scraper

The package is called proxy-scraper-cli on PyPI (the plain name is taken), the command is proxy-scraper.

With Homebrew on macOS and Linux:

brew install maximilianfeix/tap/proxy-scraper

The formula follows each release within about a day.

# Docker – learned state and results stay in two folders next to you
mkdir -p proxy-data results
docker run --rm --user "$(id -u):$(id -g)" -v "$PWD/proxy-data:/data" -v "$PWD/results:/work/results" \
  ghcr.io/maximilianfeix/proxy-scraper --want 50 --https-only

# pip into the current environment
pip install proxy-scraper-cli

# optional: faster event loop on macOS/Linux
pipx install "proxy-scraper-cli[fast]"

# the latest main instead of the latest release
pipx install git+https://github.com/maximilianfeix/proxy-scraper.git

# no install at all
git clone https://github.com/maximilianfeix/proxy-scraper.git
cd proxy-scraper
pip install -r requirements.txt
python3 proxy_scraper.py

Every release also ships a wheel you can install with pip install <file>.whl, and a multi-arch image (amd64/arm64) on ghcr.io. In the container the wizard never shows up, it runs straight away. For the proxy server use --serve --serve-host 0.0.0.0 --serve-open with -p 127.0.0.1:8899:8899, so the port is only open on your own machine – or set -e PROXY_SCRAPER_SERVE_PASSWORD=… instead of --serve-open.

Tab completion for bash, zsh, fish and PowerShell:

eval "$(proxy-scraper --completion zsh)"     # in ~/.zshrc (after compinit), same for bash in ~/.bashrc
proxy-scraper --completion fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/proxy-scraper.fish
proxy-scraper --completion powershell | Out-String | Invoke-Expression   # in $PROFILE

Installed, the learned state lives in your user data folder (~/Library/Application Support/proxy-scraper, %LOCALAPPDATA%\proxy-scraper or ~/.local/share/proxy-scraper; override with PROXY_SCRAPER_HOME) and results go to ./results. Run from a clone, both stay inside the project. After the second run that finds proxies it asks once for a GitHub star; PROXY_SCRAPER_NO_STAR_HINT=1 turns that off (it never shows in CI).

Started without arguments, a wizard asks what you are looking for:

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: MCP Server (fac_mcp_hub)

Live proxy list

Don't want to scan yourself? Every hour GitHub Actions runs the tool and publishes the hits to the proxy-list branch – every entry worked in the last run, 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 up and how often it was on the list this week, 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 all 700+ sources every hour – 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://maximilianfeix.github.io/proxy-scraper/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 – about 30 seconds instead of a full scan (517 of 1,169 worked from here). With --serve you have a rotating proxy in under a minute.

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 – .vscode/mcp.json:

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

Codex – ~/.codex/config.toml:

[mcp_servers.proxy-scraper]
command = "uvx"
args = ["--python", ">=3.10", "--from", "proxy-scraper-cli[mcp]", "proxy-scraper-mcp"]

Without uv: pipx install --python python3.12 "proxy-scraper-cli[mcp]" (any Python 3.10+), then use proxy-scraper-mcp as the command.

Docker – no Python needed, the image has everything:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "proxy-scraper": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": ["run", "-i", "--rm", "ghcr.io/maximilianfeix/proxy-scraper", "--mcp"]
    }
  }
}

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.

Features

Setup wizard Started without arguments, the tool asks what you need using the arrow keys – a preset or step by step. At the end it shows the matching command line.

Fast 700+ sources fetched in parallel, large lists parsed on all CPU cores, hand-written HTTP/SOCKS handshakes directly on asyncio with 2000+ checks at once.

Real verification Every hit has to fetch two independent pages – that weeds out honeypots that only answer check requests: over 3.6 million checks, 54 % of the proxies that answered the first request failed the second. A third request catches proxies that tamper with content: about one in 40 working proxies changed a known page, usually by injecting a script (the numbers). Plus: HTTPS through a tunnel with verified TLS, anonymity level elite / anonymous / transparent and the country of the exit IP.

Learns with every run Hit rate per source, history of working proxies, automatic removal of dead and stale lists. With -l 5000 you get the best 5000 candidates, not just any.

Finds new sources by itself Searches GitHub for actively maintained proxy lists and reads source lists maintained by others. Spam clone farms and plain mirrors are detected.

Filters & target sites With --target google.com a proxy only counts if it really reaches the site – many public proxies are blocked by Google, Discord & co. Filter by country, HTTPS, anonymity and latency, and stop with --want 50 as soon as enough matching proxies are found. Filters even speed things up: with --max-latency 1000 slow proxies are given up after 1 s instead of 8 s.

Live dashboard Speed chart, latency histogram, protocols, countries and the latest hits in real time. Ctrl+C stops at any time and saves everything.

Rotating proxy server --serve turns the hits into a local proxy that sends every connection through a different one – with automatic failover when one hangs.

Runs everywhere macOS, Linux and Windows, Python 3.9 to 3.14. Only two dependencies: rich and certifi. It even notices when a firewall blocks proxies.

Thoroughly tested 760+ tests run offline against real mini proxies and honeypots on localhost – on Linux, macOS and Windows with Python 3.9, 3.11, 3.13 and 3.14.

Why not just download a list?

Named and dated: how it compares to proxifly, TheSpeedX, monosans and clarketm.

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 – HTTPS only through proxies with verified TLS.

from proxyscraper import ProxyRotator

with ProxyRotator(country="DE") as rotator:
    r = rotator.get("https://httpbin.org/ip")
    print(r.status, r.text, "via", r.via)

Usually a few seconds; when many proxies in a row are down it can take a minute (timeout= is per attempt). There's aget() with async with for asyncio code.

Already using requests, httpx, Playwright or Scrapy? proxy_url() gives you one local proxy address that rotates behind the scenes – every connection goes out through another proxy from the list, best first, dead ones skipped:

import requests
from proxyscraper import ProxyRotator

with ProxyRotator(country="DE") as rotator:
    proxy = rotator.proxy_url()          # http://country-de:…@127.0.0.1:…
    requests.get("https://api.ipify.org", proxies={"http": proxy, "https": proxy})
    # httpx.Client(proxy=proxy) · scrapy: meta={"proxy": proxy} · curl -x "$proxy"
    # Playwright wants the login apart: chromium.launch(proxy=rotator.playwright_proxy())

It runs on 127.0.0.1 with a random password, takes over each new hourly list by itself and stops with the with block.

Rotating proxy server

A list is nice – but usually you just want to enter one proxy that always works:

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.

• every connection goes through a different proxy (unless sticky); fast and proven ones are preferred

• CONNECT for HTTPS and plain HTTP requests; HTTP, SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 proxies can sit behind it (SOCKS5 with DNS through the proxy)

• HTTPS prefers proxies that passed the test with verified TLS; when no such proxy fits right now – none matches a wish like country-de, or they have all dropped out – it uses the others – your client's own certificate check still catches a proxy that breaks the encryption, so leave it on

• if a proxy stays silent inside the tunnel or returns an error page instead of TLS, the same first packet quietly goes to the next one

• three failures in a row and a proxy leaves the rotation – every 5 minutes those get re-checked and come back if they work again

• --serve-refill 6 checks fresh proxies every 6 hours in the background (the live list with --recheck live, otherwise the last run + history) with the same checks and filters, and adds the hits – a server that runs for days doesn't run dry

• listens on 127.0.0.1 only (unless --serve-host says otherwise), optionally with a password; live view with requests, success rate, pool and the latest connections

In testing: 20 of 20 HTTPS requests succeeded, over 15 different exit IPs. In the wizard this is Proxy server right away.

Live dashboard: open http://127.0.0.1:8899/__proxy-scraper/ in a browser – the pool, success rate, traffic, a live chart of requests, countries, the best proxies and the latest connections, refreshed every two seconds. It needs nothing from the internet, and --serve-password protects it like the rest.

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

Filters work on /get, /pop and /all: country=DE,AT, protocol=socks5, https=1, anonymity=elite, max_latency=1500, and format=txt for plain URLs. With --serve-password the API wants it as Basic auth, like the status page.

Coming from jhao104/proxy_pool? The endpoints, type=https and the JSON fields (proxy, https, region, anonymous, check_count, fail_count, …) are the same, so point your code at port 8899 and it keeps working – without Redis, and with proxies that passed the honeypot, tampering and TLS checks:

import requests
proxy = requests.get("http://127.0.0.1:8899/get?type=https").json()["url"]   # e.g. socks5://…, type included
requests.get("https://example.com", proxies={"http": proxy, "https": proxy})

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.

How it works

flowchart LR
    A[sources.json<br/>meta lists<br/>GitHub discovery] --> B[Fetch & parse<br/>in parallel on all cores]
    B --> C[Prioritize<br/>history → good sources → rest]
    C --> D[Check<br/>HTTP · SOCKS4 · SOCKS5]
    D --> E[Details<br/>HTTPS · anonymity · country]
    E --> F[results/]
    D -. hit rate per source .-> G[(learned state)]
    G -. next run .-> C

1. Sources – the curated list in sources.json, meta sources (other projects that maintain lists of proxy sources) and, once a day, a GitHub search for actively maintained repos. Every search adds to what earlier ones found; a list the search hasn't seen for three weeks drops out.

2. Collect – plain text, HTML tables, JSON APIs and type://ip:port lines are recognized; private and reserved address ranges are dropped. Lists that haven't changed since the last run answer 304 and come from a local cache – a second run right after the first loads 0 MB instead of ~160 MB.

3. Prioritize – known working proxies first, then by the learned hit rate of their sources.

4. Check – every proxy has to fetch its exit IP from a check target (checkip.amazonaws.com, with ifconfig.me, ipinfo.io, wtfismyip.com and ident.me as reserves – none of them behind Cloudflare) and return a valid, foreign IP. If the target goes down mid-run, the tool switches and re-checks the proxies that were affected, so the statistics don't learn from an outage. Anyone passing your own IP through is out. Then comes the confirmation via httpbin.org: fake proxies that only answer the first check with “200 + IP” fail here. Finally a static HTML page has to arrive byte for byte as it does without a proxy – anyone injecting ads or scripts is out.

5. Countries and providers – looked up offline in the free DB-IP databases, including the provider (ASN) and whether it's probably a datacenter (about 45 % of working proxies are) (downloaded once a month, ~2 µs per lookup); ip-api.com is only asked for the few addresses it doesn't know.

6. Blocklists – one DNS lookup per exit IP against SpamCop, cached for the run: about 29 % of working proxies exit from a listed IP, and sites that use the list show those captchas or block them. --no-blocklisted drops them. If your DNS resolver is refused by SpamCop (large public resolvers are), the lookup is skipped instead of guessing.

7. Learn – hit rates and history are stored. Sources without hits, with content unchanged for a week or permanently unreachable are skipped.

Your own lists

proxy-scraper --source https://example.com/my-list.txt --source socks5=./socks.txt   # on top of the 700+ sources
proxy-scraper --only-sources --source bought.txt --want 50                            # only yours

Any text with ip:port works; lines like socks5://user:pass@host:port keep their type, bare ones are tried as HTTP and SOCKS5 unless you write http=…. For logins written the way many paid lists export them, ip:port:user:pass, use --recheck bought.txt, --recheck https://example.com/proxies.txt for a list on the web, or pipe the list into --recheck - – sources leave that form alone, since lists like ip:port:US:elite look the same.

Output

Every run gets its own folder; results/latest.txt always names the newest one (on macOS/Linux there is also the symlink results/latest):

results/2026-09-24_18-42-07/
├── all.txt        socks5://203.0.113.10:1080   (fastest first)
├── http.txt       203.0.113.20:8080            (plain ip:port lists per type)
├── socks4.txt
├── socks5.txt
├── proxies.json   latency, country, HTTPS, anonymity, exit IP
└── proxies.csv

Recipes

Use the fastest proxy from the last run – free proxies die quickly, so --recheck first if the run is older than a few minutes

proxy-scraper --recheck -y
curl -x "$(head -1 results/latest/all.txt)" http://api.ipify.org

For HTTPS, pick a proxy with "https": true from proxies.json – like the Python example below does.

Python requests (pip install "requests[socks]" for SOCKS)

import json
from pathlib import Path

import requests

run = Path("results") / Path("results/latest.txt").read_text().strip()   # works on every OS
proxies = json.loads((run / "proxies.json").read_text())   # fastest first

for p in proxies:
    if not p["https"]:
        continue
    try:
        r = requests.get("https://api.ipify.org", proxies={"http": p["url"], "https": p["url"]}, timeout=8)
        print(p["url"], "→", r.text)
        break
    except requests.RequestException:
        continue  # free proxies come and go – just take the next one

httpx (pip install "httpx[socks]") – straight from the hourly list, no scan

import httpx
from proxyscraper import live_proxies

for p in live_proxies(types=["http", "socks5"], https=True, min_uptime=90, limit=10):  # httpx can't do SOCKS4
    try:
        with httpx.Client(proxy=p.url, timeout=10) as client:
            print(p.url, "→", client.get("https://api.ipify.org").text)
        break
    except httpx.HTTPError:
        continue  # next one

aiohttp (pip install aiohttp aiohttp-socks – aiohttp alone can't do SOCKS)

import asyncio

import aiohttp
from aiohttp_socks import ProxyConnector, ProxyError
from proxyscraper import live_proxies_async


async def main():
    for p in await live_proxies_async(https=True, min_uptime=90, limit=10):
        try:
            async with aiohttp.ClientSession(connector=ProxyConnector.from_url(p.url)) as session:
                async with session.get("https://api.ipify.org", timeout=aiohttp.ClientTimeout(total=10)) as r:
                    print(p.url, "→", await r.text())
                    return
        except (aiohttp.ClientError, ProxyError, asyncio.TimeoutError, OSError):
            continue  # free proxies come and go – just take the next one

asyncio.run(main())

Scrapy – a downloader middleware that sends every request, retries included, through the next proxy. Scrapy only speaks HTTP proxies, https=True picks the ones that can tunnel https:// pages

import itertools

import scrapy
from scrapy.crawler import CrawlerProcess
from proxyscraper import live_proxies

PROXIES = [p.url for p in live_proxies(types="http", https=True, min_uptime=50)]
if not PROXIES:
    raise SystemExit("No proxy matches right now – loosen the filters (e.g. min_uptime)")
POOL = itertools.cycle(PROXIES)


class RotatingProxy:
    def process_request(self, request, spider=None):  # newer Scrapy leaves out spider
        request.meta["proxy"] = next(POOL)


class IpSpider(scrapy.Spider):
    name = "ip"
    start_urls = [f"https://api.ipify.org/?n={i}" for i in range(3)]
    custom_settings = {
        "DOWNLOADER_MIDDLEWARES": {f"{__name__}.RotatingProxy": 350},
        "RETRY_TIMES": 5, "DOWNLOAD_TIMEOUT": 15,
    }

    def parse(self, response):
        print(response.meta["proxy"], "→", response.text)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    process = CrawlerProcess()
    process.crawl(IpSpider)
    process.start()

In a Scrapy project, put RotatingProxy in middlewares.py and add it to DOWNLOADER_MIDDLEWARES in settings.py. For long crawls, reload the pool now and then – the list changes every hour.

Selenium – Chrome and Firefox can't send a proxy login, so point them at the local rotating server instead: every page load goes out through another checked proxy, and dead ones are skipped for you

proxy-scraper --recheck live --serve --https-only     # 127.0.0.1:8899, ready in about 30 s

from selenium import webdriver

options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument("--proxy-server=http://127.0.0.1:8899")
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)
driver.get("https://api.ipify.org")
print(driver.find_element("tag name", "body").text)     # a different IP on each start
driver.quit()

Firefox takes the proxy as preferences: options = webdriver.FirefoxOptions(), then options.set_preference("network.proxy.type", 1), "network.proxy.http" / "network.proxy.ssl" to "127.0.0.1" and "network.proxy.http_port" / "network.proxy.ssl_port" to 8899. Keep the server without --serve-host, so only your own machine can use it, and start it with --https-only when the pages are https:// – then only proxies that passed the HTTPS test with verified TLS serve them. One browser session keeps its connections, so for a new IP per page use session-NAME in the proxy login (not possible in Selenium) or restart the driver.

proxychains, Clash / Mihomo, sing-box – ready-made configs with --export

proxy-scraper --want 30 -y --export proxychains,clash,singbox
proxychains4 -f results/latest/proxychains.conf curl https://api.ipify.org

clash.yaml has all HTTP and SOCKS5 proxies plus a url-test group that always picks the fastest. singbox.json does the same for sing-box, SOCKS4 included, and opens a local proxy: sing-box run -c results/latest/singbox.json, then use 127.0.0.1:2080 as HTTP or SOCKS5 proxy. All three leave out HTTP proxies that can't tunnel (CONNECT), because these tools tunnel everything.

Browsers and the OS – --export pac writes proxy.pac: point Firefox, Chrome (via the system settings), FoxyProxy or macOS/Windows proxy settings at it and every request goes through the best 30 HTTP and SOCKS5 proxies in order, the browser moving on by itself when one fails. Local names and private IP addresses stay direct (a host name like 10.example.com doesn't count as private). The file itself has no DIRECT fallback and resolves no host names, and SOCKS4 is left out because it would make the browser resolve names with your own DNS. Two Firefox settings matter: turn on Proxy DNS when using SOCKS v5, and set network.proxy.failover_direct to false in about:config – otherwise Firefox goes direct once every proxy has failed. No install at all: the live list publishes one every hour at https://maximilianfeix.github.io/proxy-scraper/proxy.pac.

Proxifier (Windows, macOS) sends any program through a proxy, even ones without proxy settings. --export proxifier writes proxifier.ppx: import it via File → Import Profile, and every connection goes through a redundancy chain of the best 50 proxies – Proxifier tries them in order and takes the first that answers. localhost stays direct. HTTP proxies are included only when they can tunnel (CONNECT), SOCKS4 only without a login. Needs Proxifier 4; add --https-only for proxies that passed the HTTPS test.

Burp Suite, OWASP ZAP, mitmproxy – put the rotating server behind your intercepting proxy, so a scan or a brute-force test comes from many IPs while you still see every request. Start it with proxy-scraper --recheck live --serve, then:

Username wishes – country-us sends everything out through US proxies, session-NAME keeps one exit IP for a login flow – reach the server as the proxy login. mitmproxy sends it right away; Burp and ZAP may wait to be asked, so start the server with --serve-password when you rely on a wish there. Keep your tool's upstream certificate checks on (no --ssl-insecure in mitmproxy, no "ignore certificate errors" upstream in Burp or ZAP): free proxies are strangers, and that check is what stops one from reading or changing your HTTPS traffic. Tested end to end with mitmproxy 12, certificate checks on: HTTP and HTTPS through mitmproxy and the rotating server, every request out through a US proxy, and a site with an expired certificate refused. Only test what you're allowed to.

In a pipe – -o - prints the hits to stdout, the interface moves to stderr

proxy-scraper --recheck live --want 20 -y -o - | grep '^socks5://' > socks.txt

Check a list you already have – --recheck - reads it from stdin: plain ip:port lines, type://ip:port, logins (user:pass@ip:port or ip:port:user:pass), JSON, a CSV export or a table pasted from a website (HTML or Markdown), in the order it came in. Only what works from your network comes out:

curl -s https://example.com/proxies.txt | proxy-scraper --recheck - -o - > working.txt

Proxies without a type are tried as HTTP and as SOCKS5 – or as SOCKS4 with --types socks4 alone. A password with a comma, quote, | or bracket can't be told apart from the text around it in a paste; put such proxies in a file, one per line, and use --recheck file.txt.

Any tool, through the rotating server

proxy-scraper --recheck --serve &
export HTTPS_PROXY=http://127.0.0.1:8899 HTTP_PROXY=http://127.0.0.1:8899
pip download requests   # git, pip, npm & co. now go through the pool

In a GitHub workflow – the action picks working proxies for the next steps

Marketplace · Complete workflow, inputs and outputs

- id: proxies
  uses: maximilianfeix/proxy-scraper@v1
  with:
    types: socks5
    https: true
    min-uptime: 90        # on the list for 90 %+ of the week
    min-speed: 100        # optional: downloaded 100+ KB/s in the last check
    works-on: google      # optional: google, reddit, amazon
    recheck: true         # optional: check them again from the runner
- run: curl -x "${{ steps.proxies.outputs.proxy }}" https://api.ipify.org

proxy is the fastest one, file a text file with all of them (up to limit, default 20), count how many. Without a match the step fails, unless fail-if-empty: false.

In the shell, without a scan – --pick takes proxies from the hourly list in about half a second

curl -x "$(proxy-scraper --pick --https-only --min-uptime 90)" https://api.ipify.org
proxy-scraper --pick 10 --country DE --works-on google > de.txt
proxy-scraper --pick 5 --min-speed 200     # only ones that downloaded 200+ KB/s

"Fastest first" means the first answer plus the download speed measured in the last check – in a test with real pages, the 25 fastest by download loaded four times as many pages as the 25 quickest to answer a tiny request.

Without installing anything – straight from the live list

curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/maximilianfeix/proxy-scraper/proxy-list/https.txt | head -5

The shell snippets are for macOS and Linux, where results/latest points to the newest run. On Windows, results/latest.txt holds the folder name instead – in PowerShell:

$run = "results\$(Get-Content results\latest.txt)"
curl.exe -x (Get-Content "$run\all.txt" -TotalCount 1) http://api.ipify.org

Options

Everything else: proxy-scraper --help

GitHub Actions

The repo does part of the work itself:

FAQ

Almost nobody runs a free proxy for you. What ends up on public lists is usually one of these:

• Misconfigured servers – a Squid, a router or an app with a proxy port that was meant to stay internal.

• Deliberately open proxies – a few volunteers and research projects, and services that give some away to sell the rest.

• Infected machines – computers and IoT devices whose owners don't know they relay traffic. Many residential exits are like this.

• Traps – honeypots that log what goes through them, and proxies that rewrite pages to inject ads or scripts.

proxy-scraper can't tell an infected home router from an open office proxy, but it filters what it can measure: a proxy has to answer two independent requests with the same exit IP (honeypots that only answer scanners drop out), deliver a known page byte for byte (injectors drop out), and HTTPS counts only with a certificate that verifies end to end. Each hit says whether its exit is in a datacenter.

Good uses: public data, checking how a site looks from another country, testing your own blocking and rate limits, research. Never send passwords, cookies, payment or personal data through a free proxy, and keep HTTPS certificate checks on. Use them only where you're allowed to.

Many company, school and university networks block proxy connections. The tool notices a hit rate below 0.2 % and warns you – a different network such as a phone hotspot helps. The learned statistics are not downgraded in such a run.

Yes, in PowerShell and Windows Terminal. uvloop doesn't exist there and is skipped automatically. In the old cmd.exe window some symbols may be missing depending on the font.

Because only proxies that pass every check are kept. Many lists count anything that accepts a TCP connection; here a proxy must fetch two independent pages and show a foreign IP. That's usually a few hundred out of a million candidates – but they work.

Lines like socks5://user:pass@1.2.3.4:1080 keep their login: HTTP proxies get a Proxy-Authorization header, SOCKS5 uses username/password auth (RFC 1929), SOCKS4 the user ID. The same works for --recheck with your own list. The result files keep the credentials, the terminal only shows user:•••.

It's rebuilt every hour; the “updated” badge shows the last run. Free proxies come and go quickly, so for anything important run proxy-scraper --recheck right before use.

Only for things that don't matter. Public proxies are run by strangers who can read everything that isn't encrypted. Never send passwords or personal data through them, and only use them for legal purposes.

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.

Shipped in v1.24 to v1.26: --recheck - for lists you pipe in, which proxies get through to Discord, a README you can try in five seconds, the MCP server in the Docker image, logins written as ip:port:user:pass, and a Hugging Face dataset that loads in one line.

Shipped in v1.22 and v1.23: a live dashboard for the rotating server, --export pac and an hourly proxy.pac, "best first" that counts how likely a proxy is still up, the lists in a repository of their own (free-proxy-list), daily snapshots on Hugging Face, brew install, a Chinese README, Python 3.14, and a recipe for Burp Suite, ZAP and mitmproxy.

Shipped in v1.10 to v1.21: download speed per proxy and "best first" everywhere, daily snapshots, a rotating proxy URL for requests, httpx and Playwright, --pick for working proxies without a scan, a proxy pool API compatible with jhao104/proxy_pool, your own lists with --source, a GitHub Action, a Telegram bot and an Atom feed for the weekly report.

Shipped in v1.8 and v1.9: uptime per proxy and stable.txt, which proxies get through to Google, Reddit and Amazon, live_proxies() in Python, a page per proxy with its week of checks, a weekly report, live charts in this README, shareable filters on the website, sources mined from other scrapers' lists, untyped lists tried as HTTP and SOCKS5, --export singbox, PowerShell completion and recipes for httpx, aiohttp and Scrapy.

Shipped in v1.7: an MCP server so AI agents get working proxies and can load pages through them, 28 new sources and a GitHub search that runs daily and keeps what it found, and a cleaner website.

Shipped in v1.6: spam blocklist check for every exit IP, a live list refreshed every hour, pages per protocol and country, an optional password for the proxy server and a pool that refills itself while it runs, compose.yaml, -o - for pipes, a Discord bot, and a new website and README – everything in English now.

Shipped in v1.5: content tampering check, live list website with trend and stable proxies, provider/datacenter info, a much bigger proxy server (rotation strategies, sticky sessions, SOCKS5 inbound, status and Prometheus metrics), --recheck live, Python API, shell completion. Measured and dropped earlier: protocol detection with an extra connection (#3) and IPv6 (#1).

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

proxy_scraper.py        entry point when run from a clone
bot/                    Discord bot for the live list (own requirements, deployed by GitHub Actions)
proxyscraper/
├── cli.py              arguments, wizard or direct start
├── app.py              one run in phases: network → jobs → check → learn & report
├── options.py          RunOptions + Filters – all settings in one place
├── pipeline.py         collect sources, prioritize, check loop
├── checker.py          checks, honeypot confirmation, HTTPS test
├── handshake.py        HTTP/SOCKS4/SOCKS5 handshakes incl. login
├── judges.py           check targets, Cloudflare filter, failover
├── sources.py          source lists, meta sources, GitHub discovery, statistics
├── sources.json        curated sources
├── fetchcache.py       ETag cache for unchanged lists
├── parsing.py          find proxies in text, HTML and JSON
├── history.py          history of working proxies
├── geo.py              countries: offline first, ip-api.com as fallback
├── asndb.py            DB-IP provider database, datacenter heuristic
├── geodb.py            DB-IP country database (monthly, binary search)
├── targets.py          target sites for --target
├── output.py           result files
├── exporters.py        proxychains, Clash, sing-box, curl, PAC and Proxifier formats (--export)
├── server/             rotating proxy server (--serve): pool · http · upstream · socks · status · api · core
├── api.py              find_proxies() / check_proxies() for Python
├── agent.py            MCP tools without the SDK: live list, filters, fetch through proxies
├── mcp_server.py       MCP server (proxy-scraper-mcp) for AI agents
├── publish.py          live list for GitHub Actions
├── sourcepages.py      the ranking of the sources on the website
├── mirror.py           the same lists in their own repo (free-proxy-list)
├── paths.py            where state and results are stored
├── compat.py           differences between Unix and Windows
├── netio.py            small HTTP client on asyncio
└── ui/                 widgets · dashboard · report · wizard · serve · keys

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.