Most guides answer this question with ten site names and no evidence. We did something duller and more useful. On 9 September 2026 we read what each alternative says about itself, in its own documents. Several of them record more than a reader would guess. One of them is not the company you think it is.
Start with the confusing part
Three live domains trade under the CroxyProxy name. That is not a detail. It decides whether a promise you read applies to the site you are on.
croxy-proxy.com says in its own policy that it "is not linked to" croxyproxy.com "in any way". So the two are separate businesses sharing a name.
The same policy lists what it collects: addresses, browser type, internet service provider, timestamps, referring and exit pages. Its advertising section still contains the words "www.website.com". That is the placeholder text of an unedited template.
A third domain, croxyproxy.cc, publishes a policy updated 25 August 2026. It states that it does "not log or store the specific websites you visit". It also states it does "not sell, rent, or share your information with third-party advertisers or data brokers".
Those are good commitments. They belong to one of the three domains, and only that one.
What the alternatives say they keep
The guides that rank for this query name much the same shortlist. We read the published policies of the ones that have them.
Proxyium states that it logs "internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, Internet Service Provider (ISP), date and time stamp, referring/exit pages". Its retention is explicit: "a period of 60 days from the date of access". Its usage policy separately prohibits "automatically crawling pages using this service".
BlockAway states in its terms that it "provides a free proxy service that allows you to access restricted websites while maintaining anonymity and privacy". Its own privacy policy states that it records "The URLs you access through our service". Both sentences are theirs, on the same site.
KProxy publishes a policy dated 15 April 2023, hosted on a Google Sites page rather than its own domain. It states that "IP addresses are anonymized before transmission" and cites Spanish data protection law by name.
Whoer returns HTTP 404 where its privacy policy should be. Its terms page loads, but repeats one placeholder sentence across its numbered sections.
None of that makes any of these sites malicious. It does mean that the word "anonymous" on a homepage and a privacy policy are different things.
The one thing none of them publishes
We measured nine public proxy lists on 9 September 2026, from one datacentre in Germany. For each we took a random sample of up to 120 addresses. We fetched a real page through every one, requiring an exit address that was not ours.
Across the set, 163 of 961 sampled entries relayed a request. That is 17.0 percent. We ran it again thirty minutes later and got 14.0 percent.
Not one of those lists publishes a success rate. They publish a count and an update interval, and a reader has no way to check either.
That gap is the whole reason these comparison pages exist. It is also why we print a date beside every number.
What a web proxy cannot do, whatever it promises
A web proxy changes the address a site sees. It does not make your connection private.
RFC 7239, published by the IETF in June 2014, defines a header for this. It lets a proxy disclose "the originating IP address of a request". The same document notes that client addresses are "considered to be privacy sensitive by many people".
That is a standard behaviour, not a defect. A proxy can relay your request perfectly and still tell the destination who you are.
Anyone can run a free web proxy. Whoever runs it can read any traffic that is not already encrypted. Never send a password or a payment detail through one.
If you are here for video
Watching something a network blocks is the most common reason people reach for these tools. It is worth knowing where the platform stands.
YouTube's terms of service took effect on 15 December 2023. They prohibit attempts to "circumvent, disable, fraudulently engage with, or otherwise interfere with any part of the Service". That includes features that "limit the use of the Service or Content".
We are quoting the platform rather than advising you. It is their document and it is public.
What we could not check
Six of these operators sit behind protections that blocked our research tooling entirely. For those we have their published documents and nothing more.
One claim on our own older pages said CroxyProxy deliberately blocks banking and payment sites. We could not verify it. Its homepage contains no such statement. The paths where terms and a policy would live return 404. Neither of the other two domains states it either.
So we are not repeating it here. A claim we cannot source does not belong on the page. That applies to our own back catalogue too.
What free web proxies are actually for
They are the right tool for opening one blocked page, or checking how a site looks from elsewhere. That is a real use and it is why they exist.
They are the wrong tool for a login, for anything on a schedule, and for anything private.
Our own free proxy list is a different shape of the same idea. It is free in the same way. When a job has to keep running, HProxy paid proxies are the alternative. They use residential, ISP, mobile and datacenter addresses that are not flagged. They are billed by the gigabyte with no subscription, from $0.44/GB.
Method and limits
Every operator document above was read on 9 September 2026 and is quoted in the operator's own words. Policies change without notice, so check the date on the page you are reading.
We quote what these companies publish. We make no claim about what any of them actually does with traffic. This page must not be read as one.
The list measurements come from one afternoon and one datacentre in Germany. A home connection or a school network may see different results.
Six domains could not be reached by our research tooling at all. Their absence from the measured figures is a gap in our reach, not a judgement on them.
Sources
- croxy-proxy.com privacy policy, read 9 September 2026.
- croxyproxy.cc privacy policy and terms, both marked last updated 25 August 2026, read 9 September 2026.
- Proxyium privacy policy and web proxy policies, read 9 September 2026.
- BlockAway terms and privacy policy, read 9 September 2026.
- KProxy privacy policy, dated 15 April 2023, read 9 September 2026.
- YouTube Terms of Service, YouTube LLC, effective 15 December 2023.
- RFC 7239, Forwarded HTTP Extension, IETF, June 2014.
- Our own market audit of nine public proxy lists, run twice on 9 September 2026.