Proxies for Chub AI: Two Meanings of Proxy, the Australia Block, Regional Content Fences, and What an IP Can Fix

Chub AI is the character hub of the roleplay world: a library of user-made character cards, a chat interface (long known as Venus), and a bring-your-own-model design where you connect OpenAI, Claude, OpenRouter, Google, NovelAI, a local Kobold server, or Chub's own Mars models by subscription. Its documentation describes the platform as uncensored, with no meaningful restriction on the kinds of characters that can be posted, and that single fact explains most of what follows. Uncensored platforms are the first thing school and workplace filters block, the first thing age-assurance laws reach, and the first thing regulators write to.

Two crowds search for a Chub AI proxy. Roleplayers, for whom a proxy is a model address entered under the OpenAI connection, the same meaning the word has on Janitor AI and in SillyTavern. And people in Australia, the UK, Canada or New Zealand who have met a block page or a banner saying that by law some content is restricted in their region, and want an address somewhere else. This guide separates the two, records what happened in Australia and the UK with dates and our own check, and is honest about what an IP address does and does not change.

Proxy means two things on Chub

Under Chub's API connections, the paid providers are listed with two ways in. The documentation says OpenAI's models can be used with either an API key or the use of a reverse proxy, and the same for Anthropic's Claude. In the interface that is the Reverse Proxy option under the OpenAI connection, with a Reverse Proxy URL and a Reverse Proxy Key, plus a Check Proxy button. Chub's own inference API, the Mars and Mercury models, can in turn be used in other front ends in the same way as an OpenAI reverse proxy, which is how SillyTavern and Risu users connect to it.

All of that is about which server writes the replies. None of it touches your IP address. Chub's documentation also carries the clearest warning in the whole roleplay ecosystem about the free versions: it recommends official API keys over third-party reverse proxies for security and ethical reasons, because reverse proxies are created by unauthorized third parties who gain access to your data and IP address, may enable logging, leak your information, and use stolen API keys which you have no control over; and while advertised as free, the proxy owners are shouldering the costs and could shut down access at any time. The honest alternatives are your own key, or Mars, which the documentation describes as a $20-a-month subscription with unlimited messaging and no keys or servers to manage.

If the reverse-proxy meaning is what brought you here, the free-backend routes and the errors that come with them are covered for the neighbouring apps in best free Janitor AI proxy and best free SillyTavern proxy, and the values transfer: Chub wants the base URL ending in /v1 without the /chat/completions suffix, which it adds itself. The rest of this page is about the network kind.

The fences: Australia off, the UK and others fenced

Chub's regional restrictions arrived in two waves, and they are not the same thing.

The first wave was the UK's Online Safety Act. In the week the law's enforcement date arrived, 25 July 2025, Chub geo-fenced UK users, and PygmalionAI's note announcing its own geoblock recorded that JanitorAI, ChubAI and Civitai had already made that decision. Civitai and Janitor blocked the whole country, a split we map across every affected service in which AI sites block the UK and Australia; what UK users report from Chub since then is a banner reading that by law some content is restricted in their region, with tag search and creator pages disabled and adult content hidden, while the safe-for-work site stays up. Users in Canada and New Zealand report the same fence. We checked the UK ourselves on 24 August 2026: a request for chub.ai through a UK exit returned the site's normal front page, so the fence is applied inside the site rather than at the door.

The second wave was Australia, and it was a full block. Australia's eSafety Commissioner recorded in its October 2025 findings that, before Chub AI geo-blocked its service from Australia on 1 October 2025, Australian users searching for some companions had been shown a message stating that by law some content was restricted in their country and that they should use a VPN. On 16 October 2025 eSafety issued Chub a legal notice under Australia's Online Safety Act requiring it to detail its child-protection measures, and its March 2026 report on four companion services, Character.AI, Nomi, Chai and Chub AI, noted that one company had removed its service from Australia.

What a proxy does with a fence, and what it does not

Both waves follow the same rule: the restriction reads the country of the connecting IP address. A residential IP in a country without a fence shows the unfenced site, and an address outside Australia shows the site at all. The mechanism is no more than that, and Chub's own pre-block banner in Australia named it.

Now the honest part. The fences exist because regulators demanded age assurance for adult content, and Chub chose fencing and, in Australia, withdrawal over building it. A user reaching the unfenced site from a fenced country is doing what the fence is there to prevent, and whether that is lawful where they live is a question about their law, not about networking. Chub's terms of service could not be read for this article, because the page returns a bot challenge to automated fetchers, so we cannot quote what Chub itself says about it; read the terms yourself in a browser before relying on any of this. A proxy changes where you appear. It changes nothing about the law where you sit, and we would rather say so than take the order on false pretences.

Cloudflare in front, and the type of address

chub.ai is served through Cloudflare, and plainly: a request from a bare HTTP client, with no browser fingerprint, gets an HTTP 403 bot challenge before the site answers. chub.ai was in the free-proxy test we ran on 24 August 2026 with 50 proxies from our free proxy list and a Chrome user agent: of the 20 exits that could complete an HTTPS request anywhere, 14 reached the front page, 2 were served a Cloudflare block page, and 4 timed out. That is a lighter touch than Character.AI, which turned away half of the same exits, but the two blocks show the mechanism: shared addresses with a history get stopped, and a hosting-range address is the profile Cloudflare distrusts first.

A logged-in session wants one address from sign-in to sign-out, because the login is tied to the address it was opened from and a mid-chat change looks like theft. An ISP proxy gives you that: a static IP that an internet provider registered as a home line, on hardware that never sleeps. A static residential session on a real home line is the alternative when a specific country matters. Rotation is a scraping tool, and sticky versus rotating sessions explains why it hurts a chat login. As for the free list, use it to learn whether a block is on your network or on the site, then stop; are free proxies safe covers what an unknown operator can do with a login that passes through their server.

Reverse proxies and your IP address

One overlap between the two meanings is worth spelling out, because it is where people get hurt. A community reverse proxy sees two things: every message and reply, and the IP address of the person sending them. Chub's warning names both. A network proxy hides your address from the reverse-proxy operator, but it does nothing about the messages, which still pass through a stranger's server in plain text on their end. The only fix for that is not using the stranger's server: your own key with an official endpoint, or Mars.

Filtered networks

The plainest job of all. Chub is an uncensored site, so it sits in the adult category of every school and workplace filter, and those filters block by domain. A proxy the filter does not recognise makes the site load. The mechanics and the managed-device exception, where the filter lives in the browser policy itself and no proxy helps, are in free proxies for school.

Rate limits: per key, per subscription

If your chats stall on a rate limit, the limit belongs to the backend you connected: an OpenAI or Anthropic key has its own quotas, OpenRouter's free models have their own caps, and Mars is sold as unlimited messaging. Every one of those follows the key or the subscription, not the address, so a network proxy changes none of them. The general rule is in LLM API rate limits and proxies.

Configuration, in two steps

Our tutorials for Chrome, Windows and Android show where the address goes on each device. Before the first login, run the proxy checker so you know which country the exit reports and that your real address stays out of the headers; after it, the address stays put for the rest of the session. Never sign in through a network proxy you do not control, and never paste a reverse proxy you do not control either; the two are different tools with the same failure.

Where HProxy fits

An ISP proxy from us is $2.70/IP a month for one static address that an ISP lists as a home line, and one per account is the right count. Residential sessions, from $0.44/GB, are the pick when the exit has to sit in one particular country. A roleplay session barely moves the bandwidth meter, and the pricing is metered rather than a subscription, so the address is what you are paying for.

A network proxy will not make a stolen-key reverse proxy safe, will not raise a limit that belongs to your API key, and will not change the law where you live. For reaching Chub from a filtered network, holding a session behind Cloudflare, and appearing from a country without a fence, one clean static address is enough.

Sources

• Chub documentation, API connections: the API-key-or-reverse-proxy options for OpenAI and Anthropic, the Mars subscription, and the warning about third-party reverse proxies; and usage with third-party UIs, where the Mars and Mercury APIs are described as usable like an OpenAI reverse proxy.
• Chub documentation, What is Chub?: the platform's description of itself as uncensored.
• PygmalionAI, UK geoblock, 22 July 2025: JanitorAI, ChubAI and Civitai had already geoblocked the UK.
• eSafety Commissioner (Australia), findings on AI companion services, October 2025: Chub AI geo-blocked its service from Australia on 1 October 2025, and the prior banner told users to use a VPN. Digital Policy Alert, eSafety legal notice to Chub AI Inc., 16 October 2025. BiometricUpdate, companion chatbots not doing enough to protect kids, 26 March 2026.
• RoboRhythms, Why Chub AI is blocking content in Canada, the UK and New Zealand, 2 March 2026: user reports of the regional banner; no official Chub statement cited.
• HProxy measurements, 24 August 2026: a request for https://chub.ai/ through a UK free exit returned the normal front page; 50 free proxies pointed at chub.ai, 14 reached the page, 2 received a Cloudflare block page, 4 timed out after tunnelling; a bare HTTP client received an HTTP 403 challenge from Cloudflare.