Hide My Name

Hide My Name is best known as a VPN service, but the company also maintains a free proxy list that runs in parallel to its main product. The proxy database contains over 16,000 addresses across 73 countries, split into HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS4, and SOCKS5 types. For a secondary offering from a VPN vendor, it is surprisingly well maintained. Every proxy in the list is re-checked every two minutes, which is more frequent than most free alternatives. The site sorts geographic distribution with expected concentrations: the United States leads with about 6,000 proxies, the Netherlands has around 1,880, and Romania contributes roughly 670. Smaller nations trail off quickly. This is typical for free proxy aggregators, which collect from whatever public pools are available and happen to have IP assignments in those countries.

The interface is straightforward but stripped down. You land on a table with columns for IP address, port, country, protocol type, and anonymity level. The site lets you filter by country (73 options), protocol (HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS4, SOCKS5), proxy speed category, and anonymity level (No, Low, Medium, High). You can sort the visible results by speed or by last-checked time. The design is functional but minimal, with none of the extras like GeoIP lookups or bulk extraction tools that some competitors offer. The trade-off is immediate: Hide My Name is not optimizing for free users. This is a company selling VPN and premium proxy services, and the free list is a funnel.

What makes Hide My Name's proxy offering stand out is the honesty about how it works. The site explicitly states that proxies are not owned by Hide My Name. The company says it cannot be held responsible for proxy performance or stability, only for showing each proxy's status at the moment it checks. The source is public aggregation: proxies collected from various internet sources rather than Hide My Name's own infrastructure. That transparency is valuable. Many proxy sites overstate their verification rigor or imply ownership they do not have. Here, you get a direct statement that these are other people's machines that the company monitors but does not operate. The speed measurements themselves are honestly framed: the site measures how fast a small text file can be uploaded through each proxy in milliseconds. It does not claim these numbers are consistent or predictive. The site explicitly advises testing speed from your own location before committing to a proxy, since network conditions vary.

The two-minute re-check cycle is the strongest feature. Most free proxy lists update daily or even weekly, accumulating dead entries that slow down attempts to use them. Hide My Name's two-minute refresh means the list stays current. When you grab a proxy from the site, there is a reasonable chance it still works when you connect to it minutes later. That said, a two-minute-old check does not guarantee current availability. A proxy can fail in the time between the check and your use. The re-check cycle just minimizes the window of staleness. For a free service pulling from public sources, this is solid engineering.

The free tier imposes deliberate limits. You can view the full list in your browser and copy individual proxy addresses manually. What you cannot do is export the entire list to a file, download the data in bulk, or access an API endpoint to pull proxies programmatically. The site has a button labeled "Export Proxy List" and mentions CSV format as an option, but this feature is gated behind paid subscription. This is a conscious product decision. Hide My Name wants free users to experience the service before paying, but not so freely that they can bypass the paid tier. A developer testing a scraper might copy twenty proxies by hand, realize the pain of manual entry, and upgrade. That is the business model.

Behind the proxy list sits Hide My Name's broader VPN operation. The company claims twenty years of operation, placing its founding around 2006. That history provides some comfort on stability. A fly-by-night proxy aggregator might disappear tomorrow, taking your usage history with it. A twenty-year-old company has recurring revenue and brand reputation to protect. The broader VPN product offers additional services: VPN apps for Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and Linux, plus diagnostic tools like DNS leak tests and speed measurement. These are available beyond the proxy list. The VPN service uses a 30-day money-back guarantee, which suggests the company is willing to stand behind quality or at least is confident enough to offer that refund window.

The practical limitations of the free tier are worth understanding before relying on it. You are viewing proxies in real time through a web browser, which means your own IP is visible when you visit hide.mn to access the list. If privacy is your goal, this is ironic but not catastrophic. You have to access the proxy list from somewhere, and using your real IP for that step is separate from using a proxy for actual browsing. Still, the act of accessing the list leaks the fact that you are interested in proxies to the site operator and potentially your ISP. Manual copying of proxy addresses is tedious at scale. If you need fifty proxies for a quick test, the browser interface is fine. If you need to rotate through hundreds, the lack of bulk export becomes a real friction point. That friction is intentional. The company is nudging you toward the paid service.

The anonymity levels shown in the list are Hide My Name's own classifications, not independent verification. As with any free proxy aggregator, these are educated guesses based on test responses. A proxy classified as High Anonymous might still log traffic or have configuration quirks you do not see. The site does not publish methodology, so you are trusting its classification scheme without knowing the exact criteria. For many use cases this is acceptable, since most public proxies perform roughly the same regardless of how they are categorized. For serious privacy work, it is a weakness.

Compared to other free proxy lists, Hide My Name's main advantage is the two-minute refresh cycle and the transparent communication about limitations. The disadvantage is the stripped-down interface and the aggressive paywall on bulk export. Some competitors offer browser plugins or desktop apps for easier access. Some offer larger free databases. Hide My Name is relatively restrained. It is not trying to be the biggest free proxy list or the easiest to use without paying. It is a VPN company offering a proxy list as a secondary product and monetizing users who want more than viewing-only access.

The list is best for someone who wants to try a handful of proxies before committing to a paid service, or for lightweight testing where a few manually selected addresses suffice. If you are building a production system that needs bulk proxy access, the free tier will frustrate you quickly, which is the intended outcome. The company would rather have you pay for reliability than spend engineering time optimizing the free experience. For very casual use, the frequent checks and geographic variety make it a reasonable option. Just accept that you are visiting a sales funnel, not a pure public utility.