In today’s digitally connected world, online privacy and security have become paramount. Whether you’re concerned about protecting your personal data or simply need access to geo-restricted content, proxies can be your best friend. If you’re looking for a cost-effective way to mask your online identity, you’re in luck!
Free proxies are like free advice, both can go south. In this post, we will talk about free proxy list providers and how they can be used. People use free web proxies for anonymous web browsing, web scraping, etc.
In this article, we’ve compiled a list of five free, top-tier proxy services that can help you safeguard your privacy and unlock a world of content.
What is a Proxy Server?
A proxy server is like an intermediary between yours and a website, allowing you to anonymously browse the Web.
When a user requests a certain web page, the proxy responds by pulling that page. The website will see that proxy instead of your internal address. So, your identity will remain safe.
But, is it even secure to use a free proxy list service?
Christian Haschek a security researcher tested 443 free web proxies and the results he got were pretty obvious. His experiment shows that only 21 percent of the tested proxies were safe to use. This was because only 21% of proxies were allowing HTTPS traffic to go through.
Out of the total surveyed web proxies, the remaining 79 percent compelled users to access web pages in their unencrypted HTTP form. The primary drawback of relying on a free proxy list lies in the uncertainty surrounding the operators of these addresses. These operators might include spy agencies, data-harvesting enterprises, or even malicious hackers.
It’s important to remember that sheltering beneath the veil of a proxy server while visiting websites does not guarantee absolute security; the proxy server itself can monitor your online activities.
Are there any better options?
We have created a list of the 5 best free proxy list providers that you can use for your daily routine tasks like browsing, scraping, verification, etc. Remember, the only advantage they provide you is that they are free until they are not blocked. We will share those 21% proxies and the rest. Choose wisely!
In this post, we will test all these proxies on websites like Google, Amazon, eBay, and Yellowpages. We will create a web scraper to make 500 requests to each website and then we will judge them on the basis of errors, captcha, success, and response time. We have created a web scraper using Python; you can choose any language you like.
List of Best 5 Free Proxies for Web Scraping
1. Scrapingdog
Scrapingdog is a web scraping API, using this API, you can scrape any web page. You will get raw HTML in response to all the essential data from your target website. You are just a GET request away from your data.
They provide a free trial with 1000 API calls. You can test all the features in the free trial.
Other than Web Scraping API, they also provide rotating proxies. Using these proxies, you can verify ads, scrape websites, browse the internet safely, etc. Our rotating proxies are a mixed batch of residential and data center proxies.
The best part of using Scrapingdog is that if you get a response other than the 200 status code then the credit will not be deducted from your account. You can even customize the request headers by using custom_headers=true them as an extra parameter.
In the free plan, you can make a maximum of 5 concurrent requests, and they provide 24*7 support. They don’t differentiate between the free and the paid user. A free user can test all of the proxy networks before upgrading to a premium account.
Scrapingdog has also posted some great tutorials on building web scrapers using Nodejs, Python, Scrapy, and even Ruby.
Even if you are a beginner in the web scraping world, you can read these articles to get some idea of building your web scraper. If you want to build your web scraper, you can use our rotating proxies to rotate IPs to remain unblocked. Would also recommend reading 10 tips to avoid getting blocked while scraping.
Test Results of Scrapingdog
500 requests were sent for each website.
2. Proxyscrape
Proxyscrape provides you with a standard list of proxies in a .txt file. You can either filter proxies according to countries or opt for a mixed batch of proxies. Not just that you can even filter proxies according to their anonymity levels.
There are three types of anonymity levels:
- Transparent proxy: does not hide your IP Address.
- Anonymous proxy: hides your IP address but does reveal that you are using a proxy server.
- Elite proxy: hides both your IP address and the proxy server.
Plus, they also offer a choice between proxies that support SSL and proxies which do not. It’s a great package.
Another feature they offer is a timeout slider. The timeout slider helps you to decide the threshold time limit for connecting to any website. After certain milliseconds, the connection between your proxy and the target website will break if the proxy is taking too much time to connect. So, it’s a feature-packed proxy.
They offer HTTP, Socks4, and Socks5 proxy list which keeps on updating after every 24 hours. They have a large batch of Socks4 proxies as compared to the other two. Also, the filters mentioned earlier are only available for HTTP proxies except for selecting a country.
They have shut down their proxy checker tool due to abuse, but it was a great tool to check the quality of any proxy.
Proxyscrape does not offer any free trial for their premium service, which is kind of a negative point. You have to pay to test their services. For commercial usage, you have to upgrade to their premium packs without even knowing whether the proxies will satisfy your purpose or not.
Test Results of Proxyscrape
500 requests were sent for each website.
3. Free Proxy List
Just like any other free web proxy provider free proxy list also provides various filters like country selection, port number, anonymity, and protocol. But the problem is you cannot download the proxies. You have to refer to the table for proxies and for more proxies, you have to scroll down to get more proxies.
In the case of Proxyscrape, you get a timeout slider but in this case, you have to select the proxy on the basis of their anonymity. You can go for elite proxies for scraping. There is a Google column as well which shows whether the proxies will be able to access Google or not. This can help you save some time.
The great part is they keep updating the proxy list on a regular basis. For support, they have provided an email.
Once again be careful while using these proxies. You can end up leaking your project modules.
Test Results of Free Proxy List
4. Proxy Nova
Proxy Nova also provides a list of proxies in a table form. They claim they have the largest database of public proxies. These proxies are tested once every 15 minutes. This increases the reliability of the service. They offer a country-level filter along with that you get a filter for anonymity.
Proxy offered can be used for hiding your real IP address or maybe for unblocking some blocked websites in your country. Their proxy list is updated after every 60 seconds but the best thing is their page will not auto-refresh. This helps in using good proxies without losing them.
Test Results of Proxy Nova
500 requests were sent for each website.
5. SSL Proxy
SSL Proxies provides a list of proxies in table form. The table has eight columns in which two columns are for filtering countries and anonymity, just like other proxy providers. There is a third column by the name Google which I suppose means the proxy originated from a Google source. Let me know if I am wrong.
They claim that their proxies are tested every 10 minutes, but according to their table, the claim falls flat. There are proxies that were tested like 50 minutes ago.
They only offer HTTPS proxies. You have to pay for HTTP and Socks5 proxies. Their proxy plan offers rotating proxies that rotate every minute. For mass data collection, this proxy could be banned in no time.
Test Results of SSL Proxy
500 requests were sent for each website.
Verdict
As you can see, most of the free web proxies cannot scrape Google and Amazon except Scrapingdog. Many of them are already used for scraping Google or Amazon, and now they are permanently banned. While selecting a proxy provider, we mainly focus on the validity of the proxy. Getting captchas and errors on every request is frustrating.
Analyzing the results
We used a small script to test all these free proxy list providers with 500 requests each on four websites. Now we have to aggregate all the results for a final verdict.
Amazon
eBay
Yellow Pages
Free web proxy is used by many developers on many different sites. Many websites like search engines, eCommerce websites, social networking websites, etc have already blocked these proxies. Many SEO agencies use these proxies to scrape emails and scrape Google search results to generate SEO reports. Search engines use honeypot traps to block proxies. This ends up increasing the error rate. Free web proxy is also blocked by many ISPs, so be careful while subscribing to services like Free proxy lists or SSL proxy.
But you can use Scrapingdog to scrape almost any website. You can also use Proxyscrape for web scraping or anonymous browsing. With low-quality proxies, you can end up getting blocked.
Also, check out this dedicated server, to solve any IT infrastructure challenge for your organization.
Different Types of Proxies for Web Scraping
There are many different types of proxies for web scraping, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.
The most common type of proxy is a shared proxy, which is a proxy that is used by multiple people. This type of proxy is usually the cheapest and easiest to find, but it is also the least reliable since it is shared by so many people.
Another common type of proxy is a private proxy, which is a proxy that is only used by one person. Private proxies are more reliable than shared proxies, but they are also more expensive.
The most reliable type of proxy is a dedicated proxy, which is a proxy that is dedicated to only one person. Dedicated proxies are the most expensive, but they are also the most reliable.
When choosing a proxy for web scraping, it is important to consider your needs and budget. If you need a proxy that is very reliable, you will need to pay more for a dedicated proxy. If you are on a tight budget, a shared proxy may be a good option.
Additional Resources
Here are a few additional resources that you may find helpful during your web scraping journey:
