Free SOCKS4 proxy list 2026

SOCKS4 is a lower-level proxy protocol that carries any kind of TCP traffic, not just web requests, which makes it more flexible than an HTTP proxy. It sits below the application layer and simply forwards your connection, so it works with browsers, scrapers, game clients and other tools alike.

SOCKS4 is the older SOCKS version. It forwards TCP connections but lacks the authentication, UDP support and remote DNS resolution that SOCKS5 adds. It still works for simple TCP tunneling, but if a SOCKS5 proxy is available you will usually want that instead.

Most tools take a SOCKS proxy as a connection string in the form socks5://IP:PORT (or socks4:// for this version). In a scraper or HTTP client you set it as the proxy option; in a browser you point the SOCKS host and port at the IP from the table. Because SOCKS4 carries raw TCP, the same proxy works for non-browser tools too, which is one reason people choose it.

Free SOCKS4 proxies die constantly, so build for failure: pull several from the list, rotate between them, and drop any that time out or return errors. The download button gives you the whole filtered SOCKS4 slice as plain text, ready to load into your tool as a batch. Test each one against a simple endpoint that echoes your IP first, to confirm it is alive and actually changing your apparent address before you point real work at it.

A free SOCKS4 proxy costs nothing and is ideal for learning and throwaway tasks, but the IPs are public and shared, so they are often slow, frequently blocked, and offer no uptime guarantee or support. For a single quick check that is fine; for anything you need to repeat, the constant dead entries quickly outweigh the zero price.

A paid SOCKS4 proxy gives you dedicated or cleanly rotated IPs, real uptime and predictable speed on addresses that have not been burned by thousands of strangers. HProxy paid proxies are billed by the gigabyte with no subscription, so you only pay for what you use and keep the free SOCKS4 list purely for experiments.