The 7 Best Free Proxy Lists for Web Scraping

When you're scraping the web, you either use proxies or you're doing a pretty lousy job at data extraction. Sure, you might not need a backconnect proxy with thousands of datacenter and residential IPs, but you'll at least need some basic proxies to get started.

The big problem for hobby scrapers or beginners? IPs usually cost money. Fortunately, free proxies exist, and there's actually a decent selection to choose from. We've researched several options and picked the top 7 so you get the best quality available in the free proxy world.

Before we jump into the list, let's talk about what you're getting into. Free proxies are great because they cost nothing, but they're far from perfect.

The Pros and Cons of Free Proxies

First and foremost, they're free. Obviously. But that's a massive advantage when you're just starting out or testing a new scraper. You can grab any tutorial, code up your scraper, and start using it with proxies right away.

There's a lot to say about the benefits of using proxies for web scraping. The short version: having multiple IPs lets you distribute your requests and avoid getting blocked by target websites. If you need more reliable IP rotation and better success rates, 👉 premium residential and datacenter proxy solutions offer faster speeds and higher anonymity compared to free alternatives.

Unfortunately, being free is pretty much the only advantage these proxies have. Now for the downsides.

Since these IPs are publicly available, everyone knows about them. Target websites probably already know these addresses and have blocked them. Either someone already tried accessing your target site and got the IP banned, or the webmaster found the free proxy provider, copied all the IP addresses, and blacklisted them. It doesn't always happen, but it happens often.

Free IPs are often slow and offer minimal anonymity. Maintaining proxies costs money, so you can't seriously expect top-quality IPs at zero cost. As the saying goes, you get what you pay for.

Free proxies can expose you to security risks. Like I mentioned, it's somewhat unusual for someone to offer free addresses. One sketchy reason could be that someone's monitoring and copying the information flowing through the proxy, then using that data for malicious purposes. Again, there's no guarantee, but you should stay alert.

1. WebScrapingAPI

One major factor that sets WebScrapingAPI apart from other providers on this list is that the API uses only premium proxies, including both residential and datacenter IPs with extensive geolocation options (7 for datacenter, 40 for residential, and over 200 for custom plans). While paid plans range from $20 to $200, every new user gets a free two-week trial period with full access to all API features.

The API handles proxy rotation automatically, so all requests run through different IPs unless you specifically request otherwise. Plus, you can send up to 10 concurrent requests, meaning you can fully utilize the proxy pool and extract data at blazing speeds.

Of course, WebScrapingAPI offers more than just proxies—you also get access to the scraper itself. You get all the features of a premium data extraction tool without writing a single line of code.

When the free trial ends, you still don't have to spend a dollar unless you want to, because you'll be downgraded to the free package with 1,000 API calls per month for as long as you need it.

2. ProxyScan

ProxyScan is a collection of useful tools bundled into a single website. At the forefront is the proxy list, which claims to have over 12,000 proxies total. While that's an impressive number, from what I found, the actual count might be somewhat lower, possibly because free proxies constantly appear and disappear, so the number fluctuates.

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

Regarding geolocation, ProxyScan offers IPs from over 100 countries. While not all countries have large numbers of proxies available, it's still excellent coverage. You can also check the uptime and ping of each IP, making it easy to select the best ones.

3. Proxy-List

The general idea behind Proxy-list seems to be quantity over quality. In total, there are over 17,000 proxies, most of which are SOCKS 4. I say the focus is less on quality because you don't get information about IP uptime or ping. The site updates its lists every two hours and eliminates unresponsive IPs.

When browsing the lists, you get the IP, port, anonymity level, and country. Compared to other providers on this list, that's somewhat sparse.

You can filter results by anonymity (transparent, anonymous, or elite) and by country. I noticed that some countries you can select in the filter don't actually have any proxies available on the site, so don't necessarily expect to find IPs from every region. That said, there are still plenty of options.

Beyond browsing through many pages, you can also download lists as plain text or directly to your clipboard. While this is much faster, the txt file only contains the IPs, so if you want to record ports or origin countries too, you'll need to retrieve them directly from the website. As you'd expect, I suggest scraping the pages rather than manually collecting the data.

4. Free Proxy

Free Proxy might not be the prettiest website, but it has a large number of IPs with detailed information and all the filtering features you need.

The total number of IPs exceeds 23,000, most of which are SOCKS4/5. These IPs are collected from a total of 160 countries. Most IPs come from Asia, but you'll have little trouble finding proxies from any corner of the world.

When examining the lists, you see a wealth of information including speed, uptime, response, and how much time has passed since the last check. That last detail is actually one of this provider's weak points—many IPs are checked quite infrequently, and there's a good chance you'll encounter many dead IPs, especially if days have passed since the last ping.

For navigation, you can filter by country, anonymity, and protocol. You can also sort the list by speed, uptime, response time, and "last checked." So it shouldn't take long to find what you're looking for. There's also a button labeled "Export IP:Port" that lets you quickly copy the entire address to add to your scraper.

5. Spys.one

Like the previous provider, Spys.one offers a wide range of IPs from around the world. In total, they appear to have more than 26,000 proxies, surpassing Free Proxy. However, many IPs haven't been checked in weeks or even months, so they may no longer work.

In terms of navigation, you can select nearly any criteria to filter the list. You can even select by city, though many proxies don't have a specific city assigned. So only use this option if it's crucial for your use case, otherwise you might miss valuable opportunities.

While the provider seems to have a large number of IPs, I can't say I particularly like the user interface, so retrieving all these IPs might be more of a hassle than you'd expect.

6. Geonode

Unlike most other websites on this list, Geonode doesn't make money from advertising revenue but from renting premium residential proxies. Alongside that, they also have a free proxy list that any visitor can use.

When you're dealing with large-scale scraping projects that require reliable connections and diverse IP pools, 👉 Geonode's residential proxy network provides better stability and geographic coverage than what you'll typically find in free proxy lists.

Their list contains nearly 5,000 proxies distributed across an impressive number of countries. To navigate this list, you can select country, degree of anonymity, proxy protocol, organization, speed, uptime, and date of last check. Essentially, you're filtering by all the distinguishing features they offer.

When checking speed, you get a current timeframe (in milliseconds) and a bar that compares that specific IP's speed with others in the list. If the response time is unusually high, the number appears in red, indicating it's probably too slow for proper use.

Such small details can impact overall results. That's why Geonode deserves a spot on the list, even though the proxy pool itself is a bit small compared to other featured websites.

7. Free Proxy Lists

Free Proxy Lists might not be the prettiest website, but it definitely gets to the point and presents you with a comprehensive list of IPs.

It's commendable that the platform has proxies from 78 different countries, a number you might not get from paid service providers. Unfortunately, many of these countries have fewer than 10 IPs each. In many cases, there's only a single proxy from the region.

In total, there are over 600 IPs there, all using HTTP or HTTPS protocol, so you're out of luck if you need SOCKS.

Searching for the right proxy can get tedious quickly, but the website lets you filter results by country, port, protocol, anonymity, and uptime. You can also see response and transmission speeds using colored loading bars. While not very detailed, they can help when selecting faster IPs.

Choose Your Proxies Wisely

While I understand the appeal of free proxies and recommend you at least try them out, remember that your time is also a resource. It might even be more valuable than money.

Let me explain: when you're going through thousands of free proxies, you might save money by not paying for premium proxies, but you have to constantly maintain them. The IP often stops working or gets blocked, and you then need to find a new list and add it to your script. When new free IPs appear, you need to add them since the old ones will eventually stop working.

Basically, free proxies save money but require repeated work. I'd recommend every scraping enthusiast build at least one scraper and use it with free proxies because it's an excellent learning experience. After that, you might only want accurate data delivered on time with little or no human intervention.

That's the thinking behind WebScrapingAPI. We've developed a REST API that takes most of the work off your hands so you can focus entirely on using the data.