Glossary · Proxy types
HTTP proxy
A proxy that understands the HTTP protocol and forwards web requests, optionally reading and modifying headers along the way.
An HTTP proxy is built for the web specifically. It speaks the protocol your browser speaks, which means it can do more than blindly relay bytes: it can read the request line and headers, cache responses, and route based on what it sees. For ordinary web traffic that awareness is useful.
For encrypted sites it steps back. When you request an HTTPS page, the proxy uses the CONNECT method to open a tunnel and then passes the encrypted stream through untouched, because it cannot read inside TLS without breaking it. So an HTTP proxy handles HTTPS perfectly well, it just cannot inspect the encrypted part, which is by design.
Compared with SOCKS5, an HTTP proxy is more specialised and more capable within its lane and useless outside it. If your traffic is web requests, it is the natural fit; if it is anything else, you want SOCKS.
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