The Top 7 Free Proxy Lists for Web Scraping

If you're scraping websites without proxies, you're probably not getting very far. Maybe you don't need a fancy rotating proxy setup with thousands of IPs, but you'll at least want some basic protection between your real IP and the target site.

The catch? Most proxies cost money, which isn't great if you're just starting out or working on a hobby project. That's where free proxy lists come in. They're not perfect, but they exist, and some are actually worth using. We've tested quite a few options and narrowed it down to seven providers that won't completely waste your time.

Before we jump into the list though, let's talk about what you're actually getting with free proxies.

What You're Really Getting With Free Proxies

The obvious advantage is right in the name: they're free. You can grab any web scraping tutorial, write your code, and start extracting data without opening your wallet.

When it comes to serious web scraping operations, having access to a reliable proxy pool can make or break your project. If you need more stable performance and broader coverage, 👉 explore premium residential and datacenter proxy solutions that handle rotation automatically so you can focus on your actual scraping tasks.

Now for the not-so-great news.

Since these IPs are publicly available, everyone knows about them. That means websites probably know about them too. Either someone already used that IP to hammer the site you want to scrape (and got it banned), or the site admin found the free proxy list and preemptively blocked everything. This doesn't happen 100% of the time, but it happens enough to be annoying.

Free IPs are usually slow and don't offer much anonymity. Running a proxy server costs money, so don't expect premium performance from something you're not paying for. You get what you pay for, as the saying goes.

There's also a security concern. It's honestly a bit strange when someone offers free proxies without any obvious business model. One sketchy reason to do this? Monitoring the traffic that flows through those proxies and harvesting sensitive information. Not every free proxy provider is doing this, but you should stay alert.

1. WebScrapingAPI

WebScrapingAPI stands out because it actually uses premium proxies, not the usual free proxy fare. You get both residential and datacenter IPs with solid geolocation options (7 datacenter locations, 40 residential, and over 200 for custom plans). While they have paid plans from $20 to $200, new users get a two-week free trial with full feature access.

The proxy rotation happens automatically unless you specify otherwise, so every request goes through a different IP. You can send up to 10 concurrent requests, which means you can actually use the proxy pool effectively and scrape at decent speeds.

The service includes more than just proxies, you also get access to their scraper functionality. Basically, you get a premium data extraction tool without writing much code.

After the trial ends, you're not cut off. You drop down to the free tier with 1,000 API calls per month for as long as you want them.

2. ProxyScan

ProxyScan is basically a toolkit website, but the main attraction is their proxy list. They claim to have over 12,000 proxies total. That number might fluctuate since free proxies are constantly appearing and disappearing, but it's still impressive.

Most of these are SOCKS 4 or 5, with just over 100 being HTTP/S. Nearly all are anonymous or elite proxies, which are the only types that really matter for web scraping.

You get IPs from over 100 countries. Not every country will have tons of options, but the coverage is solid. You can also check uptime and ping for each IP, making it easier to pick the best ones.

3. Proxy-List

Proxy-List goes for quantity over quality. They have over 17,000 proxies, mostly SOCKS 4. The quality focus is questionable because you don't get uptime or ping information. The website updates its lists every two hours and removes unresponsive IPs, which helps.

When browsing their lists, you see the IP, port, anonymity level, and country. Compared to other providers here, that's somewhat basic.

You can filter by anonymity (transparent, anonymous, or elite) and by country. Some countries in the filter don't actually have any available proxies, so don't expect to find IPs from every region. Still, there are plenty of options.

Besides browsing pages manually, you can download lists as plain text or copy them to your clipboard. The txt file only contains the IPs though, so if you need ports or country information, you'll have to grab it from the site directly. Better yet, just scrape the pages.

4. Free Proxy

The website design won't win any awards, but Free Proxy has a massive number of IPs with all the filtering features you'd want.

They have over 23,000 IPs total, mostly SOCKS4/5. These come from 160 countries. Most are from Asia, but finding proxies from anywhere in the world shouldn't be difficult.

Looking at their lists gives you a wealth of information: speed, uptime, response time, and when the IP was last checked. That last detail is actually a weak point because many IPs aren't checked very often. You might run into dead IPs, especially ones that haven't been pinged in days.

Navigation is straightforward. Filter by country, anonymity, and protocol. You can sort the results by speed, uptime, response, and "last checked." There's also an "Export IP:Port" button that lets you quickly copy addresses for your scraper.

5. Spys.one

Like Free Proxy, Spys.one offers IPs from around the globe. They seem to have more than 26,000 proxies, which beats Free Proxy's numbers. But many IPs haven't been checked in weeks or even months, so they might be dead.

For navigation, you can filter by almost any criterion. You can even select by city, though many proxies don't have a specified city. Use that option only if it's absolutely necessary, or you might miss good options.

While the provider has a large number of IPs, the UI isn't great, so actually getting those IPs might be more tedious than you'd expect.

6. Geonode

Unlike most sites on this list, Geonode doesn't rely on ad revenue. They make money from premium residential proxies but also maintain a free proxy list anyone can use.

Their list has almost 5,000 proxies spread across an impressive number of countries. For serious data extraction projects where reliability matters more than cost, 👉 check out Geonode's premium proxy services with faster speeds and better uptime that can handle enterprise-level scraping operations.

To navigate, you can filter by country, anonymity level, proxy protocol, organization, speed, uptime, and last check date. Basically, you can filter by every metric they show.

When checking speed, you get an actual time in milliseconds plus a bar comparing that IP's speed to others in the list. If the response time is abnormally high, the number appears in red, signaling it's probably too slow.

These small details can impact your results, so Geonode deserves a spot here even though the proxy pool is smaller than others I've mentioned.

7. Free Proxy Lists

Free Proxy Lists isn't the prettiest website, but it gets straight to business with an extensive list of IPs.

The platform has proxies from 78 different countries, which you might not even get from some paid providers. Unfortunately, many countries have fewer than 10 IPs each. Sometimes there's just a single proxy from a region.

In total, they have over 600 IPs, all using HTTP or HTTPS protocol. If you need SOCKS, you're out of luck here.

Clicking through pages looking for the right proxy gets old fast, but you can filter by country, port, protocol, anonymity, and uptime. Response and transfer speeds are shown with colored loading bars. Not super detailed, but helpful for picking faster IPs.

Making the Right Choice

I get the appeal of free proxies, and I think you should at least try them. But remember that your time is also a resource, and it might be more valuable than money.

Here's what I mean: cycling through thousands of free proxies saves money since you're not paying for premium services, but it demands constant attention. IPs will stop working or get blocked, forcing you to find new lists and update your scripts. As new free IPs appear, you'll need to add them because the old ones will eventually die.

Free proxies save money but require repetitive maintenance work. I'd recommend any scraping enthusiast build at least one scraper and use it with free proxies because it's a solid learning experience. After that though, you might just want accurate data delivered on time with minimal human intervention.

That's the philosophy behind services that handle the proxy management for you, letting you focus on actually using the data you extract rather than babysitting your IP lists.