10 Best Free Proxy Services in 2026

A friend of mine, not Derek for once, a woman named Tina who manages restaurant Instagram accounts in Miami, asked me last month if there were any free proxy services that actually work. She’d been paying $30/mo for a proxy subscription and her business partner told her she was wasting money because “there are free ones everywhere.”

I told her the business partner was half right. There are free ones everywhere. Most of them are garbage. Some of them are genuinely good. I sent her a list. This article is that list, expanded, with actual test numbers because Tina asked me “how do you know which ones are good” and I realized I should probably write down the data instead of just going from memory.

Quick Comparison – Best Free Proxy Services

How I Picked These Free Proxy Providers

I’ve tried free proxies from probably fifteen or twenty services over the past year. Some as part of actual work, some out of curiosity, some because Derek sent me a link and said “try this one it’s actually decent” which is usually followed by it not being decent.

For this article I went back and ran each one through the same test: I grabbed 50 IPs from each list-based service, checked how many actually connected, measured response times, and ran the working ones through IPQualityScore to check fraud scores.

For the managed services like 1Browser and Webshare I tested connection stability over a week of daily use. Two services I originally tested injected ads into pages I was loading, which I discovered because a product listing on Amazon suddenly had a banner ad that Amazon did not put there. Those two didn’t make the list.

What Are Free Proxies Even For?

Tina’s question was actually a good one because most people don’t need a proxy at all and don’t know why they’d want one. From what I’ve seen, most people looking for the best free proxies want one of three things: they want to see what a website looks like from another country, they want to get past a block at their school or office or hotel, or they want to scrape a small amount of data without paying for it.

Free proxy servers handle all three of those fine as long as you don’t push too hard. The problems start when people try to use them for things they’re not built for, which I’ll get to at the end.

The 10 Best Free Proxies That Actually Work

1. Floppydata Free Proxy List

Floppydata publishes a free rotating list of residential IPs that updates throughout the day. I tested 50 IPs from their list on a Tuesday afternoon and 43 connected, which is roughly an 85% success rate.

That’s the best connection rate I got from any free list service. Average response time was about 1.8 seconds, which is slower than paid residential but fast enough for scraping and testing. I ran the working IPs through IPQualityScore and 37 out of 43 came back with fraud scores under 30, which means the IPs look clean to most detection systems.

The six that scored higher were probably recycled from someone else’s session. I use this list when I need to test something quickly, maybe 50 to 100 requests, without touching my paid Floppydata bandwidth. For the best free proxy with residential-quality IPs this is where I start.

2. 1Browser Free Plan

I told Tina about 1Browser second because her use case is Instagram accounts and free proxy services alone won’t protect those, you also need fingerprint isolation. 1Browser’s free plan gives you ten browser profiles with proxies in five countries including the US. I ran the built-in proxies through PixelScan and every profile passed with zero flags on fingerprint, timezone, and IP consistency.

Connection uptime over a week of daily testing was basically 100%, I had one timeout in seven days and it reconnected in under ten seconds. Each profile has its own fingerprint, cookies, proxy, timezone.

No card. Tina set it up that same afternoon and messaged me saying “why didn’t you tell me about this six months ago.” She manages five Instagram accounts on the free plan now. Zero account flags in the three months since she started.

3. Webshare

Ten free datacenter proxies, 1GB monthly bandwidth. Response times averaged 0.4 seconds which is the fastest on this list, datacenter IPs are always fast, that’s not the issue. The issue is detection. I ran all ten through IPQualityScore and eight scored above 75, which means most platforms flag them on sight.

I tested one on Instagram and the account got action-blocked within two days. Amazon started CAPTCHAs after about 90 requests. Derek and I both started on Webshare years ago and for learning how proxies work without spending money it’s still the best place to start. Just don’t use it for anything you care about keeping.

4. ProxyScrape

Unlimited free proxy list in multiple protocols. I tested 50 IPs from their HTTP list: 21 connected, 29 timed out. That’s about a 40% success rate. Of the 21 that worked, average response time was around 3.5 seconds and some were over 8 seconds.

Fraud scores were all over the place, from 15 to 90+. The site has ads everywhere. Tina tried it and said “this feels sketchy” and I said “that’s fair, use Floppydata instead” and she did. For quick throwaway geo-checks where you don’t care about speed or reliability, it works. That’s about it.

5. Free Proxy List (free-proxy-list.net)

One of the oldest free proxy list sites on the internet. I tested 50 IPs: 16 connected. That’s roughly 30%, which is the worst connection rate on this list. Of the 16 that worked, response times ranged from 1.5 seconds to over 10 seconds with an average around 5.

Most of the IPs had fraud scores above 60. I used this site in my first month of proxy work before Derek told me about residential providers. It’s fine for manual, one-at-a-time checking if you’re patient enough to try five IPs before one works.

6. Geonode

Small free tier with rotating residential IPs, requires signup. Better quality than most free lists. I got about 30 requests before hitting the free limit. Connection rate was around 80% and response times averaged about 2 seconds, which puts it close to Floppydata.

Fraud scores were mostly clean, under 25 on IPQualityScore. Decent for geo-testing when you need residential-quality IPs and Floppydata’s list happens to be between updates.

7. KProxy

Browser extension and web-based proxy browser for casual unblocking. Since it’s a managed service there’s no connection rate to test, it either connects or it doesn’t, and in my testing it connected every time. Speed is the bottleneck though.

I loaded ten different websites through KProxy and the average page load was about 4 seconds versus 1.5 seconds on my normal connection. Tina tried it for Instagram and said the speed was too slow for loading stories. For basic web browsing behind a content filter at a hotel or school, it works.

8. CroxyProxy

Web-based, no install, paste a URL and it loads through their server. Average page load was about 6 seconds in my testing which is painfully slow. I’ve used it exactly twice, both times at airports. Some JavaScript-heavy sites didn’t render correctly.

One tab at a time, ads on the interface. For checking one blocked page when you have no other options it exists. I wrote a longer piece on CroxyProxy alternatives if you want something better.

9. Spys.one

Detailed proxy lists with port numbers, anonymity levels, uptime percentages. I tested 50 IPs: 26 connected, roughly 50%. The uptime percentages they publish were mostly accurate, IPs they listed at 90%+ uptime connected reliably while the ones below 70% were hit or miss. Response times averaged about 3 seconds.

The interface looks older than some of my clients’ children. Derek showed me this site when he was teaching me about proxy anonymity levels and it was useful for learning. Not beginner-friendly but the quality data helps you filter before you test.

10. HideMyName (hidemy.name)

Filtered proxy list by country, speed, and anonymity. I tested 50 IPs: 28 connected, about 55%, which is better than Free Proxy List and ProxyScrape. The average response time was around 2.5 seconds. They seem to filter out dead IPs faster than most list sites. Fraud scores were mixed, roughly half under 40 and half above. Fine for quick IP appearance checks and basic geo-testing.

When Free Proxy Services Are Fine and When They’re Not

I told Tina this and I’ll tell you the same thing: if the worst case when the proxy fails is you refresh the page and try again, free is fine. If the worst case is you lose a client’s Instagram account or get your scraper permanently IP-banned from Amazon, pay for a real proxy or at minimum use 1Browser’s free plan which gives you the fingerprint protection that standalone free proxy providers don’t.

• Free is fine for: geo-checking websites, getting past school or hotel wifi blocks, testing scraping scripts with small request volumes, learning how proxies work.
• Free is a terrible idea for: managing social media accounts (free proxies share IPs with thousands of other users and the fraud scores are unpredictable), serious scraping over a few hundred requests (even Floppydata’s free list will get flagged at volume because the IPs are shared), anything requiring login to accounts you care about (free proxy providers can see your unencrypted traffic), anything needing consistent uptime (the best free list I tested had 85% connection rate which means roughly one in six requests fails).

Tina’s business partner was right that free proxies exist. He was wrong that they replace a paid setup for professional work. Tina uses Floppydata’s free list for testing and 1Browser’s free plan for her Instagram accounts. She stopped paying $30/mo and hasn’t lost an account in three months. That’s the setup I’d recommend. Derek agrees, which he expressed by sending a thumbs up emoji when I told him, which for Derek is basically a standing ovation.