Using the free proxy checker

Short version: the proxy checker shows what a website sees when you visit: your exit IP, the network it belongs to, whether WebRTC leaks a different address, and any proxy headers. It's free, and you don't need an account.

Open it here: proxy checker.

Check your browser's proxy

1. Turn your proxy on in the browser (or system settings) first.
2. Open the checker and press the button. Nothing is sent until you do.
3. Read the exit IP. With the proxy on, it should be the proxy's address, not your own.
4. Turn the proxy off and run it again. If the address changes between the two runs, your browser traffic really is going through the proxy.

What each result means

• Exit IP: the address your request arrived from.
• Network: the owner of that address, by its ASN. A datacenter IP should read as hosting. An ISP IP should read as a consumer internet provider, even though it sits in a data centre. The label is a best guess from the network's number and name, and the page says so.
• WebRTC: browsers can reveal an address over WebRTC, outside the proxy. A different public address of the same IP version is a leak.
• Proxy headers: the check runs over HTTPS, so a normal proxy can't add headers. If you see Via or X-Forwarded-For here, something is decrypting your traffic, or your own client sent them.
• DNS: not checked. Spotting a DNS leak needs a DNS server of our own.

Proxy set for a few sites only?

If you route only some sites through the proxy (with a PAC file, for example), add the checker's host to your rules or the check goes direct and shows your own address. The checker page names the host. Our PAC file generator can build those rules for you.

Checking your proxies in the dashboard

Want to know which of your proxies actually answer? The dashboard has its own checker, and it doesn't touch your balance.

1. In the sidebar, open Tools, then Proxy checker.
2. On My proxies, pick the proxies to check. No credentials to paste. Or use Any proxy list to paste a list, one proxy per line, and choose its Proxy format and Protocol.
3. Click Begin test. Each proxy comes back OK or Failed, with its exit IP. A proxy on an IP allowlist can't be tested this way and comes back Failed.

Checking from a terminal

To check a proxy from code or a server, fetch an IP-echo service through it and compare with your own IP:

curl -sS https://api.ipify.org; echo
curl -sS --proxy "http://HOST:PORT" --proxy-user 'USERNAME:PASSWORD' https://api.ipify.org; echo

The second line should print the proxy's exit IP, not yours. Use the host, port and credentials from your dashboard.

What it can't tell you

It shows what sites see. It can't see your real IP from behind a proxy, so it can't tell you whether your setup is "right" for a particular site.