Quick Comparison
HTTP(S) Proxies
The HTTP(S) protocol is the foundation of the web. An HTTP proxy is specifically designed to understand and handle web traffic (the requests your browser or scraper sends to websites).Key Characteristics:
- Application-Level: It operates at Layer 7 of the OSI model. This means it “understands” the content of your web requests and can interact with them (e.g., add or modify headers).
- Optimized for Web: Because it’s specialized for web traffic, it’s often faster and more efficient for tasks like web scraping.
- Easy to Use: Supported by virtually every web scraping library (
requests,Puppeteer,Scrapy) and tool out of the box.
For web scraping and browser automation, HTTP(S) is almost always the right choice. It’s simpler, faster, and fully supported by our entire feature set, including the Proxy Gateway parameters.
When to use HTTP(S):
- Scraping websites
- Automating tasks in a browser
- Verifying ads on web pages
- Accessing web-based APIs
HTTPS vs. HTTP: Encrypting the Link to Our Gateway
HTTP and HTTPS are not two different proxy products. They are the same proxy, reached over the same host and port - the only difference is whether the connection between your program and our gateway is encrypted.
Why HTTPS is the Default
OverHTTP, your proxy credentials are sent to the gateway as Proxy-Authorization: Basic base64(username:password). Base64 is an encoding, not encryption - it is trivially reversible. SOCKS5 username/password authentication is plain text. Anyone able to observe that first hop can read both values: a shared Wi-Fi network, your internet provider, a corporate inspection appliance, a compromised router.
Your proxy username is not just an identifier either. It carries your account ID, the proxy name and every targeting parameter attached to it, so an observer also learns which countries, cities or sessions you are working with.
HTTPS closes that gap. Your credentials travel inside a TLS session terminated by our gateway, whose certificate your client verifies the same way it verifies any website.
Client Support
Speaking TLS to a proxy is a separate capability from speaking TLS to a website, and not every client has it. These are the ones we test:
If your tool is not on this list, try
HTTPS first. A client that cannot do it fails immediately with a TLS or protocol error rather than hanging - in that case fall back to HTTP, and prefer running that tool from a network you control. If credentials cannot be protected on the wire at all, authenticate by Authorized IP instead, so that nothing is transmitted in the first place.
SOCKS5 Proxies
SOCKS5 is a more versatile and lower-level protocol. Unlike an HTTP proxy, it doesn’t understand the traffic passing through it; it simply creates a “tunnel” and passes along any TCP/IP traffic.Key Characteristics:
- Transport-Level: It operates at Layer 5 of the OSI model. It doesn’t inspect or modify your traffic, making it more anonymous.
- TCP-Versatile: It can handle TCP-based internet traffic beyond just web pages, including email (SMTP), file transfers (FTP), and other non-HTTP protocols.
- DNS Resolution: SOCKS5 can handle DNS requests on the proxy server’s side, which can prevent DNS leaks and enhance privacy.
When to use SOCKS5:
- When your application is not using the HTTP protocol (e.g., an email client, FTP, or other TCP-based tools).
- For tasks requiring the highest level of anonymity where you don’t want the proxy to interact with your traffic at all.
- For applications requiring higher anonymity where you don’t want the proxy inspecting your traffic.
How to Choose in Your Dashboard
You can select your preferred protocol when creating or editing a proxy in the “Connection Helper” section of your Proxy Settings page.
Selecting the protocol in the proxy configuration screen.