The 10 Best Free Proxies for Web Scraping in 2022

If you're looking to scrape web data, you'll need a proxy. A proxy is a server that acts as an intermediary between your computer and the internet. This means that when you request data from a website, the proxy will send the request on your behalf and then return the response to you.

There are many free proxies available, but not all of them are created equal. In this article, we'll show you the 10 best free proxies for web scraping so that you can get the data you need without spending a fortune.

TLDR - If you don't want to read the full article - you can immediately see the list with the free proxy providers.

What is a Proxy?

A proxy is a server that acts as an intermediary between your computer and the internet. When you connect to the internet through a proxy, your online activities are hidden from your ISP and other third parties. Proxies are often used for web scraping because they can help to bypass restrictions placed on websites.

There are two main types of proxies: public proxies and private proxies. Public proxies can be used by anyone and are usually free to use. Private proxies are only accessible by authorized users and typically come with a fee.

A detailed comparison of different types of proxies can be found here.

Why use proxies for web scraping?

There are several reasons why you might want to use proxies for web scraping. First of all, proxies can help to hide your IP address. This is important because your IP address can be used to track your location and identity.

Another reason to use proxies for web scraping is that they allow avoid getting blocked when web scraping. If a website has blocked your IP address, you will not be able to access the site. However, if you use a proxy, you will be able to route your traffic through a different IP address, which will allow you to bypass the block.

Proxies can also help you to speed up your web scraping process. By routing your traffic through multiple proxies, you can make requests from multiple IP addresses at the same time. This can help you to scrape data more quickly.

Every HTTP request can go through a random proxy server or you can choose a proxy server with specific geolocation, for example, you can pretend that you are from Germany by using only german proxy servers.

Which proxy provider to use?

There are many free proxy providers available on the internet, but not all of them are equally good. Some free proxy providers may sell your data to third parties, or they may not provide a reliable service.

When choosing a free proxy provider, it is important to consider their reputation and reviews from other users. It is also a good idea to make sure that the provider does not sell your data to third parties. A good proxy provider will also offer reliable service with little or no downtime.

But not all free proxy lists are equally great, that is why we have created this hand-picked list of the top 10 free proxies and the best free proxy lists for web scraping.

List of free proxy providers

Each of these providers offers a different set of features, so it is important to choose one that best suits your needs. For example, some proxy providers offer more anonymity than others. Some also offer more IP addresses than others.

When choosing a free proxy provider, it is important to consider your specific needs. If you need a high degree of anonymity, for example, you will want to choose a provider that offers a large number of IP addresses and provides robust security features.

1. ScraperAPI

Website: https://www.scraperapi.com

ScraperAPI is a paid premier proxy provider that also offers 5,000 API requests for free every month.

This proxy scraper tool is at the top of the list among other providers since, in contrast to others, it offers free proxies only after a brief signup process. What makes this good?

Free proxy lists, on the other hand, just leave proxy addresses exposed for anybody to take, which can quickly result in IP abuse and bans.

With ScraperAPI, free users may access high-quality IPs in the same way as premium users without having to deal with the open-ended nature of most free proxy lists.

The free plan includes five simultaneous requests and multiple IP addresses.

Additionally, unlike the majority of other free providers, they give 24/7 help to address queries about utilizing their proxies for web scraping or other purposes.

2. Spys.one

Website: http://spys.one/en

Although many nations only have a small number of addresses coming from their locations, Spys.one is a proxy list database with IPs from 171 different nations. Each of the top three countries on the list—Brazil, Germany, and the United States—offers more than 800 proxies, and hundreds more are available from any other nation you can think of.

To help customers focus their search for free proxies, the HTTP proxy list has been divided into subcategories with sorting options such anonymous free proxies, HTTPS/SSL proxy, SOCKS proxy, HTTP, and transparent.

There are ratings for each address for latency, speed, and uptime. As can be expected, the majority of proxies are slow and have high latency, with an average uptime of about 70%. Free proxies are also listed with a "check date," which indicates the most recent time the status of the proxy was reviewed.

About one-fourth of all proxies have been checked in the past 24 hours, another one-fourth in the past week, and the remaining one-half have been examined more than a week ago.

Some of the less well-known nations haven't been checked in more than a month and are probably dead.

3. Open Proxy Space

Website: https://openproxy.space/list

Three different sorts of batches—SOCKS4, SOCKS5, and HTTP/S—of free proxy lists are offered by Open Proxy Space. Each batch is assigned a label based on the time it was formed, and each list only contains active proxies at that time.

The time the lists were formed is indicated by a tag, such as "3 hours ago," "1 day ago," "2 days ago," etc. Users can look through lists that were made months ago, however the older the list, the more dead proxies it will have, and fresh batches will already have the active proxies from those older lists.

Once a list has been chosen, users can select one or more nations to include or omit from the list before exporting the IPs as text data. Freeloaders have fewer sorting options than paid premium members, who have access to unique API scripts, ports, and other features.

 

4. Free Proxy

Website: http://free-proxy.cz/en

Free Proxy has a design straight out of Bel-Air, and its list of more than 17 000 free proxies is simple to explore and sort. Users can choose between many protocols, including HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS4, and SOCKS5, as well as between elite and transparent levels of anonymity.

Most of the other providers on this list lack certain unique options that this one does. A page with three distinct lists—proxies by port, proxies by region, and proxies by city—opens when the "Proxies by category" option at the bottom is chosen.

In essence, a user can choose a free proxy from a list of proxy servers organized by country and even individual towns around the globe. This would ideally be used to simulate a certain location or to test content access depending on a world region.

Although these sub-lists are alphabetized, there is no other way to arrange them.

 

5. ProxyScrape

Website: https://proxyscrape.com/free-proxy-list

With simple sorting options like country, anonymity, and SSL, ProxyScrape includes your standard-fare list of free proxies.

Using two-character country codes instead of the complete country name or even a far more comprehensible three-character country code when sorting by a nation can be a little perplexing.

A "timeout" slider that enables users to restrict proxy results to those that reach or surpass a specific timeout threshold, measured in milliseconds, is one noteworthy feature.

They provide a premium service with changing proxies and other cutting-edge features, similar to a few other companies on this list.

ProxyScrape, on the other hand, doesn't offer a free trial, so customers will have to pay for those advantages, which negates the whole point of acquiring free proxies in the first place.

People with a higher sense of altruism might be interesting to discover that ProxyScrape donates to a number of organizations, including Teamtrees and the Animal Welfare Institute, though it is unclear how one could contribute by making use of their free proxies.

6. Free Proxy Lists

Website: http://www.freeproxylists.net

Of all the free proxy server providers we've researched, Free Proxy Lists features one of the most straightforward and user-friendly design.

Those looking for SOCKS proxies must look in another drawer because it only has HTML and HTMLS proxies. Search criteria such as ports, levels of anonymity, and nation can be specified. The free proxy list can also be filtered by city or region, however, doing so requires clicking through up to 38 pages of proxies in order to locate the appropriate city or region. This is the single significant flaw in an otherwise straightforward list.

The response and transfer levels for each address are shown in two color-coded bar graphs next to it, but there is no numerical information provided to explain what each level signifies, thus it is only useful as a general comparison to other proxies listed side by side. Fortunately, uptime is expressed as a percentage.

7. SSL Proxy

Website: https://www.sslproxies.org

"SSL (HTTPS) proxies that are just checked and updated every 10 minutes," reads the tagline for SSL Proxy. Although all of the proxies on the list have been tested within the last hour, this is not actually the case.

The free proxies come from different nations around the world, however, there are only 100 proxies on the list, which limits their availability. Users may, as predicted, sort by country, this time including both the two-character country code and the full name, as well as anonymous choices, with almost every proxy on the list being designated as either anonymous or elite.

There is also a field marked "Google," which probably refers to Google accepting the proxy or perhaps a proxy coming from a Google source.

We were unable to test SSL Proxy's functionality because all of the addresses showed "Google" as "no" when we checked it. This list solely includes HTTPS proxies, as implied by the name, with HTTP and SOCKS proxies available for a fee.

8. GatherProxy

Website: http://www.gatherproxy.com

Like almost all of the other proxy sources we've looked at, GatherProxy provides a listing of free proxy IP addresses. These proxies are sorted in a little novel and enlivening manner. A list of the 50 proxies that were most recently tested is displayed on the site, together with information on each proxy's update date, country of origin, level of anonymity, uptime, and response times.

There is a field for "city" information, but it is empty. Although the proxies are not updated this frequently, the page automatically refreshes every 30 seconds or so. Although it's doubtful that most of the free proxies will stop operating in such a short amount of time, the addresses at the top of the list frequently display an update time from more than 5 minutes ago.

GatherProxy presents uptime data as a ratio rather than as a percentage or bar graph, with "L" denoting "live" and "D" denoting "down" on the left and right, respectively. The collection of tabs at the top of the screen, which includes tabs for proxy by country, proxy by port, anonymous proxy, web proxy, and socks list, is the most useful feature, though.

The user is directed to a sub-page with links to filter the proxies based on criteria after choosing one of these alternatives. The ability to select from a pool of specific proxies is perfect because there is even a count stated for each nation and port. Half of the 11,000 proxies in their database had been verified as active in the previous 24 hours. Additionally, they provide free site scraping and proxy checking tools along with instructional videos.

 

9. Proxy-List

Website: https://www.proxy-list.download

Over 5,000 free proxies are available on Proxy-List, which is updated every two hours.

Proxy-List has the same standard sorting options as the other free proxy providers, with the primary listings divided into four categories: HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS4, and SOCKS5.

One useful feature is the option to export proxy lists as text files or, with the click of a button, copy the information to the clipboard. They provide a Chrome plugin for web scraping and API access to the proxy list, which the most of serious web scrapers presumably already have but it might still be worthwhile to test out.

 

10. Proxy Nova

Website: https://www.proxynova.com/proxy-server-list

Additionally, Proxy Nova offers a list of free proxies that places the most recently checked addresses at the top. Visitors to this website must manually refresh the page, unlike GatherProxy, which is something we kind of like. Finding a superb free proxy IP address only to have it vanish because the page auto-refreshed and you have no easy way to get it again is one of the most aggravating experiences. In our experience, proxies at the top of the list were never more than a minute old. The proxies do keep quite up-to-date. Additionally given are their locations, uptimes, and speeds. One odd field on the proxy table just states "YouTube," yet it was empty for every proxy listed. There are no ways to determine the size of the pool of free proxy IP addresses, and the only sorting choices are by country and anonymity.

Most of us have heard the adage "you get what you pay for" throughout our lives, but with free proxies, this is only generally accurate. As you can see, there are some reputable suppliers selling active proxies for free or, at most, a small amount of ad money from users visiting their websites. Buying proxies for nothing should yield a list of entirely dead addresses. Top-tier proxy providers do provide premium packages for access to their private proxy lists, but a few of them also give away free API calls or free trials. Any proxy obtained from a free list comes with the highest warning about longevity. Free proxies will inevitably come and go, necessitating the daily updating of web scrapers' lists of proxies. Furthermore, even freely available proxies that have been verified to be active may be disabled by ISPs and websites, causing users who paid nothing for those proxies to feel ripped off.