Online proxy checker

When you hit Check proxy, our server connects to your proxy and sends a single request through it to an IP lookup service. That one round trip answers five questions:

• Status. Did the proxy accept the connection and pass traffic? If anything goes wrong, you get the raw error message instead of a vague failure.
• Protocol. Which protocol the proxy actually speaks. With Auto selected, the checker tries HTTP, SOCKS5 and SOCKS4 and reports whichever answered.
• Exit IP. The address websites actually see when your traffic goes through the proxy. This should be different from your own IP.
• Country. Where that exit IP is located, according to geolocation data. Handy for confirming you got the region you paid for.
• Response time. How long the full round trip took, in seconds. A rough but useful speed measure.

1. 01Leave the protocol on Auto and the checker works out what your proxy speaks. If you already know, pick it from the dropdown to skip the guesswork.
2. 02Paste the proxy address. Credentials go before the host, like user:[email protected]:8080. Plain ip:port works too.
3. 03Hit Check proxy and read the report. A working proxy shows its exit IP, location, and speed. A failed one shows the exact error so you know what to fix.

Prefer separate boxes for host, port, username and password? Switch to the Fields tab at the top of the checker. Same test, different input.

The exit IP is the whole point of a proxy. If it matches your own address, the proxy is not doing anything. If it matches the host you typed in, you have a direct connection to a working proxy server. Some providers route you through a gateway, so the exit IP can legitimately differ from the host you connect to.

The country comes from a geolocation database. These databases are mostly right and occasionally stubborn, so a proxy sold as French might show up as Belgian for a while. If the region matters for your work, check it here before you point real traffic at it.

Response time is the full round trip: our server, through your proxy, to the lookup service and back. Under one second is quick. One to three seconds is fine for most scraping. Anything slower will drag down whatever you are building. The first check on a cold proxy often runs slow, so give it a second run before judging it.

The short answer: you do not have to. Leave the dropdown on Auto and the checker tries HTTP, SOCKS5 and SOCKS4 against your proxy, then shows which one answered in the report. Still, it helps to know what you own when you buy. Proxies sold for web scraping and browsing are usually HTTP, while proxies meant for general traffic (bots, games, torrent clients, custom scripts) are often SOCKS5. When a provider lists both on the same port, either will work.

We wrote a plain-English comparison in SOCKS5 vs HTTP proxies if you want the details. And if you already know what you have, the dedicated HTTP, SOCKS5 and SOCKS checkers come with the right protocol preselected.

Your proxy is used for exactly one test request and then forgotten. Nothing is written to a database, nothing is added to a list, and nothing gets shared or resold. I built this tool because I needed a quick way to test proxies without installing anything, and that is still all it does.