What is a Proxy?

5 min read

A proxy is a server that acts as an intermediary between your device and the internet. When you use a proxy, your internet traffic is routed through that server before reaching its destination. The website or service you're connecting to sees the proxy's IP address — not yours.

How Do Proxies Work?

Here's the basic flow when you use a proxy:

  1. You send a request (e.g., to visit a website)
  2. The request goes to the proxy server first
  3. The proxy forwards the request to the destination
  4. The destination sends the response back to the proxy
  5. The proxy sends the response back to you

From the destination's perspective, the request came from the proxy's IP address, not yours.

Types of Proxies

HTTP Proxies

HTTP proxies handle standard web traffic (HTTP/HTTPS). They're the most common type and work well for web browsing and scraping.

SOCKS5 Proxies

SOCKS5 proxies work at a lower network level and can handle any type of traffic — not just HTTP. They're faster and more flexible, supporting UDP traffic as well as TCP. SOCKS5 also supports authentication and is the preferred type for privacy-sensitive applications.

Residential Proxies

Residential proxies route your traffic through real home IP addresses provided by ISPs to regular consumers. They look like real users to websites, making them much harder to detect and block.

Datacenter Proxies

Datacenter proxies are hosted in commercial data centers. They're faster and cheaper than residential proxies but easier for websites to detect and block since many data center IP ranges are well-known.

Common Uses for Proxies

  • Web scraping — collect data from websites at scale without getting blocked
  • Market research — check prices, ads, or content as they appear in different regions
  • Privacy — hide your real IP from websites you visit
  • Bypassing geo-restrictions — access content restricted to certain countries
  • SEO monitoring — check search results from different locations
  • Account management — manage multiple accounts across platforms

How to Check if a Proxy is Working

The easiest way to check if a proxy works is to use a dedicated proxy checker like ProxyThis. Paste your proxy list, click Test, and see which ones are working, how fast they are, and where they exit.

A proxy is considered "working" if it successfully forwards a request to a neutral endpoint and returns a valid response within the timeout window.

Where to Get Proxies

For reliable proxies, check out our Best Proxy Providers page. Free public proxies exist but are unreliable, frequently dead, and potentially dangerous — avoid using them for anything sensitive.