ProxyDB

ProxyDB is a free proxy aggregator that maintains a sprawling international database of public proxies. The core appeal is scale: the site lists roughly 31,000 proxies spread across 190 countries and territories, filtered into HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS5 types. For someone building a quick script or testing geographic IP behavior, the sheer volume is a genuine advantage over smaller lists. The interface is straightforward. You land on the homepage and see a paginated table of proxies, updated with timestamps showing when each was last verified. The site sorts proxies by anonymity level (Transparent, Anonymous, or High Anonymous), uptime, and response time. You can filter by specific countries, ports, or protocols from a sidebar menu. The database breaks down as roughly 18,000 HTTP proxies, 18,500 HTTPS proxies, and 8,600 SOCKS5 proxies, with the bulk classified as High Anonymous. The geographic distribution is uneven: the United States dominates with 3,426 entries, followed by Iran, Indonesia, and China. Smaller nations have just a handful each, and coverage is present but sparse in parts of Africa and Central Asia.

The real question with any open proxy list is freshness and accuracy. ProxyDB timestamps each proxy with its last check time. You see entries marked as verified 1 day ago, 12 hours ago, 9 hours ago, or even 15 hours ago. This suggests the site runs automated verification loops across the entire database, catching dead proxies and updating status regularly. That's better than a static list that never refreshes. However, a check timestamp does not promise the proxy still works when you use it. A proxy verified 2 hours ago might have gone down an hour ago. The site is transparent about this: it says proxies are not owned by ProxyDB itself. You are looking at public proxies scraped from the open internet, and the site only verifies whether they respond to a test request at the moment of checking. Ownership and responsibility lie with whoever is actually running the proxy on the other end, which is often unknown.

The anonymity levels themselves deserve scrutiny. A "Transparent" proxy identifies itself as a proxy and leaks your original IP. An "Anonymous" proxy hides the fact that it is a proxy but may leak your IP. A "High Anonymous" proxy is the best the public pool offers: it does not identify itself as a proxy and does not leak your IP. ProxyDB separates these tiers, so you can avoid the useless Transparent ones if anonymity matters. Still, these classifications come from the site's own tests, not independent certification. A proxy's anonymity depends on how it was configured and who is running it. Misconfigurations or intentional logging are possible. The site cannot police the integrity of proxies it does not own.

Using ProxyDB itself is free. You visit the site, browse the list, click a proxy address to copy it, and plug it into your client. No account is required, no login wall, no free tier limits on how many proxies you can view or use. The site does offer additional tools beyond the main list: a proxy extractor (to pull all proxies matching certain filters into a bulk output), country-specific lookups, ISP breakdowns, and an anonymity checker. These are also free to use from the web interface. If you want to automate proxy fetching, the site does not advertise a public API for free users. Paid plans likely exist, but they are not promoted on the free pages. This means your workflow is manual: visit the site, select proxies, copy them into your tool. At scale, this becomes tedious. You are also subject to whatever rate limits the web server imposes, though the site does not state a specific cap.

The trade-off is immediate. A public proxy is somebody else's machine with unknown configuration and unknown intent. It could be logging traffic. It could be run by someone testing the same scripts as you, so many proxies on this list are probably dormant or overloaded. Uptime is measured in hours, sometimes minutes. If you are testing a web scraper or checking geographic behavior for a handful of requests, that's acceptable. If you are running production traffic, you need paid proxies with SLAs. The site is also silent on HTTPS privacy: even over an HTTPS connection through a proxy, the proxy operator sees your traffic destination (the domain you visit) and response metadata. They cannot see your encrypted payload, but they see where you are going. For many use cases this is fine. For privacy-sensitive work, it is not.

ProxyDB's relative strength is its honest maintenance and geographic breadth. It does not pretend these are premium proxies or guarantee uptime. The verification timestamps show effort to keep the list from becoming a graveyard of dead addresses. The protocol variety (HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS5) covers most public use cases. The size means you have options when individual proxies fail. The filtering by anonymity level means you can filter out the obviously useless Transparent proxies. That said, the database is a public commons. The proxies come from everywhere: compromised machines, open misconfigured servers, honeypots set up by researchers or security companies to catch abuse. You have no visibility into any of that. The site's terms likely disclaim liability. You are responsible for using the proxies legally and ethically.

Compared to other free proxy lists, ProxyDB holds its own on scale and freshness. It is larger than many competitors and updates more frequently than lists that are checked once a day. It is not the fastest or most sophisticated option: some sites offer browser plugins or desktop apps for easier access, and some claim higher verification standards. ProxyDB is deliberately minimal. That minimalism has a virtue: it is fast to load and browse, and it does not distract with marketing or upsells (beyond the implied premium tier). The site feels like a utility, not a sales funnel.

The site is best for low-stakes proxy needs: testing a web scraper, checking how a site renders from different countries, running a one-off geographic test, or learning how proxy rotation works. If you are a developer wanting to avoid paid proxy services for a hobby project or proof of concept, ProxyDB gives you an easy starting point. It will fail sometimes, which is expected. If you find yourself replacing dead proxies constantly or building complex retry logic because proxies fall over, it is a signal to move to a paid service. For casual use, though, the free database is honest about what it is and surprisingly useful.