We sell proxies, and we publish free proxy lists, and those two facts stare at each other across this entire section. The resolution is data: we track the free pool continuously, we publish what it measures, and we let the numbers say where free ends. This page is the map of all of it, the lists, the checking tools, the safety record, and the platform-by-platform reality.
The honest premise
A free proxy is someone else's open port. It can carry a logged-out page view right now and be dead in an hour, and both of those facts are the product. Everything on this page follows from taking that seriously instead of pretending a list is a service.
Getting a list that is alive
The pillar is the free proxy list, re-checked around the clock, with the 2026 edition covering what changed this year. If you only want entries that answered a health check recently, free proxies that actually work is that cut, and the free SOCKS5 list filters by protocol for the tools that need tunneling below HTTP. Builders who want the pool without the page can pull the free proxy API instead.
Scale claims deserve their own scrutiny. The biggest free proxy lists compares the headline counts against what is actually alive inside them, the mega-list is our own large cut with the deadweight measured honestly, and the open proxy list explains what an open proxy technically is and why that word should make you careful. The claim that shows up most often and survives scrutiny least is covered in free residential proxies: residential IPs cost real money to source, so a list promising them for free is describing something else.
Picking by country
Geography is the most common reason to want a specific proxy at all, and the list by country is the full breakdown. The three countries people ask for by name get their own live pages: USA, UK, and Germany. The searches in other languages are real too, so kostenlose Proxy-Liste and gratis proxy answer them properly instead of redirecting to an English page and hoping.
Checking before trusting
A list is a starting point, a check is what makes it usable. How to check if a proxy is working is the routine, from the one-line curl test to anonymity levels, and our proxy checker runs it for you. The 2026 free proxies overview covers what this year's pool looks like in practice.
The measured version sits in two data studies. The free proxy data study, built from 112,392,312 checks across 582,061 tracked proxies, measured lifespans, success rates and network types across the pool. The source-quality study went one layer down, tracing which sources feed the lists and how quality differs between them. Neither study flatters the free pool, which is rather the point of measuring.
What free actually costs
The price of a free proxy is paid in something other than money, and the safety pages itemize it. Are free proxies safe is the full accounting: traffic visibility, shared exits, injected content, and the difference between inconvenience and genuine risk. Free anonymous proxy tests the anonymity claim specifically, and the transparent vs anonymous vs elite explainer defines the levels those claims borrow. People weighing a VPN against a proxy for privacy should read free proxy vs VPN, because the two get sold interchangeably and behave nothing alike.
And because the fair question is not whether free proxies are flawed but whether the flaw matters for your task, when free proxies are fine draws the line: throwaway, logged-out, failure-tolerant work on one side, anything with accounts, money or deadlines on the other.
The sites that hand you a browser instead
Half the searches for a free proxy actually want a web proxy, a site with a URL bar that fetches pages for you, no configuration involved. Free web proxy covers that breed, free web proxy vs proxy list explains the difference to someone deciding, and free online proxy site reviews what the popular ones actually do with your traffic. The adjacent searches have adjacent answers: free proxy site, website unblocker, unblock proxy, and free proxy server each unpack what that exact phrase tends to mean and what the person typing it usually needs instead.
The graveyard
Free proxy infrastructure dies constantly, and we keep the record rather than deleting it. Dead free proxy sites documents the list sites that vanished, and the free proxy list graveyard tracks dead sources at scale. The paid side of the industry has its own, larger cemetery, documented in the proxy graveyard, and the two share a lesson: an unmaintained list outlives its usefulness by years, and the search results rarely notice.
Platform reality: where free holds and where it folds
The general answer to "will a free proxy work on X" is that the ceiling is a logged-out look, and every platform page below tells you where that ceiling sits for its site. Social platforms judge network reputation hardest, and the pages for Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit, Facebook and Discord each explain what their platform does to datacenter IPs, usually before login even completes.
Streaming services detect free exits almost instantly, which the pages for Netflix, Disney Plus, HBO Max, Hulu, Spotify, YouTube and Twitch demonstrate rather than deny.
Gaming is its own category because latency, not detection, is the first wall: a proxy adds a hop, and gameplay feels it immediately. The gaming overview covers that arithmetic, and the per-title pages say where the narrow legitimate uses are for Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, Valorant, Counter-Strike, Call of Duty, Warzone, Overwatch, Apex Legends, PUBG, Escape from Tarkov, Dota 2, World of Warcraft, Genshin Impact, Pokemon GO, Among Us, Brawl Stars, Clash of Clans and Mobile Legends. The pattern across all of them: region and store checks sometimes, gameplay essentially never, bans a real risk on the anti-cheat titles.
Two workloads round it out. Torrenting through a free proxy is a privacy exercise with the privacy removed, and the page says so with specifics. Web scraping is the one place free earns a real, bounded role, small and disposable jobs, and that page plus the setup map will take you from list to working code in an afternoon.
Using free without getting burned
- 1
Decide if failure is allowed to cost you anything
If a dead proxy mid-task loses money, an account, or a deadline, free is the wrong tier and no list changes that. When free proxies are fine is the two-minute version of this decision.
- 2
Pull from a checked list, then check again yourself
Start from a continuously re-checked list and verify the exact entries you will use with the checker, because minutes matter in a pool this volatile.
- 3
Keep accounts and credentials out of it
Logged-out lookups only. The moment a login rides through an open proxy, you have shared it with everyone else on that exit.
- 4
Know your platform's ceiling before you start
The per-platform pages above say what free realistically does on your target, which prevents the common afternoon of debugging something that was never going to work.
When a job crosses the line, the paid tier starts at $0.44/GB per gigabyte, pay as you go, and the difference you are buying is the part free cannot supply: exits that answer tomorrow, reputation that survives a login page, and someone accountable when neither is true.