Introduction
If you‘re looking to do web scraping at scale in 2024, using proxies is essential to avoid getting your IP address blocked. Proxy servers act as intermediaries between you and the websites you want to scrape, helping obscure your real IP address.
While you can pay for proxies, there are also many free proxy lists available online that compile public proxy servers you can use. In this guide, we‘ll take an in-depth look at the best free proxy list providers and see how they stack up for web scraping.
But first, let‘s review what proxies are and why they are so important for web scraping.
What Are Proxies and Why Use Them for Web Scraping?
A proxy server is any machine that routes traffic between you and the internet. When you use a proxy, your web scraping requests get routed through the proxy server first before going to the destination website. To the website, the request appears to be coming from the proxy‘s IP address rather than your own.
This has a few key benefits for web scraping:
Avoids IP blocking – If you send too many requests to a website from the same IP address, you risk getting blocked. By rotating proxy IP addresses, you can avoid hitting rate limits.
Improves anonymity – Routing requests through proxies helps keep your real IP address private. This is especially important if you‘re scraping any sensitive websites.
Geotargeting – Some proxy services allow you to select IP addresses from specific countries. This is useful if you need to scrape location-specific data or test how a website renders from different regions.
While you can configure your own proxy servers, it‘s much easier to use existing proxy lists or proxy provider APIs. Free proxy lists compile public proxy servers that you can use without needing authentication.
The main downsides of free proxies are that they tend to be slower and less reliable than paid proxies. Free proxy servers get a lot of traffic, so requests can take longer. And since anyone can use them, free proxy IP addresses frequently get blocked by popular websites. You usually need a large list of free proxies to find ones that work consistently.
That said, free proxy lists are still very useful for certain web scraping tasks, like one-off projects, testing, or if you‘re on a tight budget. If you need high reliability and fast performance for continuous web scraping, a paid proxy service is a better choice.
Now that we understand how proxies fit into web scraping, let‘s compare some of the top free proxy list providers.
The Top 5 Free Proxy List Providers
There are countless free proxy lists on the web, but they vary quite a bit in quality. We researched and tested many of the top proxy list sites to narrow it down to the best five:
- ScrapingBee
- ProxyScrape
- Free-Proxy.cz
- GatherProxy
- FreeProxyLists.net
For each provider, we‘ll look at their key features, assess their proxy quality, and share benchmarking results from real web scraping tests. Let‘s dive in!
1. ScrapingBee
First up is ScrapingBee, a web scraping API that offers 1,000 free monthly requests. While ScrapingBee is a paid service, their generous free tier and excellent proxy quality earn them the top spot on our list.
Some key features of ScrapingBee:
- High-quality proxies with 100M+ monthly rotating IPs
- Automatic retries and JavaScript rendering
- Headless browsers for scraping single-page apps
- Handles CAPTCHAs and allows custom headers
- Supports geotargeting in over 50 countries
- Easy-to-use API with 10+ language SDKs
ScrapingBee‘s proxies are ethically sourced and well maintained for high success rates. In our benchmarking tests, ScrapingBee had the fewest errors and blocks:
Website | Errors | Blocked | Success | Avg Time
— | — | — | — | —
Instagram | 45 | 0 | 955 | 3.3s
Google | 80 | 0 | 920 | 8.3s
Amazon | 22 | 0 | 978 | 3.34s
Alexa Top 300 | 5 | 0 | 995 | 3.34s
If you can afford a paid proxy service, ScrapingBee is hard to beat. But their free tier alone outperforms most free proxy lists, making them a top pick.
2. ProxyScrape
ProxyScrape offers one of the largest collections of free proxies in their regularly updated list. They provide HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS4, and SOCKS5 proxies that you can filter by country, anonymity, SSL, and other parameters.
Key features:
- 7000+ free proxies scraped from public sources
- Proxy checker to test proxy speed and anonymity
- Free proxy API with 100 reqs/day
- Premium proxies with higher quality/performance
The ProxyScrape website has a clean design that makes it easy to find and download proxy lists:
In testing, ProxyScrape‘s free proxies worked fairly well but had more errors and blocks compared to ScrapingBee:
Website | Errors | Blocked | Success | Avg Time
— | — | — | — | —
Instagram | 392 | 592 | 16 | 24.55s
Google | 958 | 4 | 47 | 16.12s
Amazon | 445 | 16 | 539 | 20.37s
Alexa Top 300 | 55 | 11 | 448 | 13.60s
About 40-50% of requests succeeded using ProxyScrape‘s free proxy list, with Amazon being the easiest site to scrape. The average response times were notably slower vs paid proxies.
3. Free-Proxy.cz
Free-Proxy.cz is a popular site that provides lists of free HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS4, and SOCKS5 proxies. Their proxy list is updated frequently and includes proxies from various countries with different levels of anonymity.
Some notable features:
- Regularly updated database of 7000+ free proxies
- Web proxies allow browsing through a proxy server
- Filtering by country, port, anonymity level
- Proxy checker and IP address lookup tools
Here‘s a look at their proxy list page:
Free-Proxy.cz performed similarly to ProxyScrape in the benchmarking tests:
Website | Errors | Blocked | Success | Avg Time
— | — | — | — | —
Instagram | 65 | 433 | 2 | 143.74s
Google | 969 | 9 | 0 | 313.74s
Amazon | 67 | 533 | 22 | 216.40s
Alexa Top 300 | 74 | 20 | 258 | 12.73s
The success rates were lower than ProxyScrape on some sites, with Google fully blocking the scrapers. However, performance was better on a broader test of Alexa‘s top 300 websites. Proxy speed and errors were comparable between the two free proxy lists.
4. GatherProxy
GatherProxy offers a large database of free proxies along with useful tools like a proxy checker and API. You need to create a free account to access the proxy list, which is regularly updated.
Key features include:
- 50,000+ free proxies scraped from public sources
- HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS4, SOCKS5 protocols
- Filter proxies by country, anonymity, and other factors
- Free proxy API after signing up
- Browser extensions for easy proxy use
Unfortunately, GatherProxy‘s service was down at the time of our testing, so we couldn‘t include benchmarking results. Historically their proxies have performed similarly to other top free proxy lists.
5. FreeProxyLists.net
FreeProxyLists.net rounds out our list with their straightforward free proxy list website. They have a smaller database than some other providers, but still update their proxies regularly.
Their key features:
- Around 1500-3000 free proxies at a time
- Browse proxies by country and anonymity level
- Updated every few hours
- No extra tools, just a pure proxy list
Here‘s how their list page looks:
And here are the benchmarking results:
Website | Errors | Blocked | Success | Avg Time
— | — | — | — | —
Instagram | 386 | 585 | 29 | 0.70s
Google | 984 | 6 | 40 | 168.90s
Amazon | 376 | 136 | 112 | 21.02s
Alexa Top 300 | 483 | 0 | 517 | 10.90s
FreeProxyLists.net had the highest error rates of the tested providers, but response times were quite fast when requests did succeed. Like the other free proxy lists, results were hit-or-miss depending on the website.
Tips for Scraping with Free Proxies
As the benchmarking data shows, even the best free proxy lists will have a lot of faulty IP addresses. You can expect errors and blocks on many requests. Some tips to make the most of free proxies:
Test proxies before use. Check if they are online and working before adding them to your scraper.
Rotate proxies regularly. Swap out IP addresses every few requests to minimize blocks.
Maintain a large proxy pool. You‘ll need a big list to ensure you always have working proxies available. Combine multiple proxy lists.
Adjust request rate. If you get a lot of errors, slow down your scraping speed. This puts less strain on the proxy servers.
Set a timeout limit. Avoid waiting too long for slow proxies to respond. Move on to the next IP if you don‘t get a response within 10-30 seconds.
With some tuning and a big enough proxy list, you can scrape most websites using only free proxy lists. But for large-scale scraping, you‘ll get better results with paid rotating proxies or scraping APIs like ScrapingBee.
Limitations of Free Proxy Lists
As shown in our benchmarks, even the best free proxy lists have a lot of limitations compared to paid proxies:
- Lower success rates – Expect a 20-50% success rate, vs 99% with paid proxies.
- Slower speed – 10+ second response times are common due to overcrowded proxy servers.
- Unreliable uptime – Free proxies can go down anytime without warning.
- Potential security risks – You don‘t know who operates free proxies and they could log your data.
So when does it make sense to use paid proxies? If you need to scrape large websites or do continuous scraping, investing in a proxy service will give you much more reliable results.
Paid proxies cost anywhere from $10-$1000+ per month depending on bandwidth and features. Dedicated proxies give you exclusive access to an IP, while rotating proxies let you cycle through a pool of IPs.
For most web scraping projects, rotating or shared proxies are the most cost-effective option. ScrapingBee and other web scraping APIs include proxy rotation in their service, or you can subscribe to a dedicated proxy network.
The Future of Free Proxy Lists in 2024
Free proxy lists have been around since the early days of the web and remain popular for their ease of use. While paid proxy services keep improving, there will always be a need for free, public proxies.
In the coming years, we can expect the major free proxy list providers to keep maintaining their databases as long as web scraping stays popular. Security likely won‘t improve much since the public nature of free proxies makes them inherently risky.
The best innovation we may see is a standardized API format for accessing free proxy lists. This would make it easier for developers to ingest proxies from multiple sources.
We‘ll also see more specialized free proxy lists emerge for specific use cases like ad verification, pricing intelligence, and more. So while paid proxies aren‘t going anywhere, free proxy lists should continue to play an important role in the web scraping ecosystem.
Final Thoughts
As web scraping continues to grow, so will the need for proxies. While paid proxies offer the best reliability and performance, free proxy lists remain a valuable resource for lighter scraping needs.
In our analysis, we found ScrapingBee, ProxyScrape, Free-Proxy.cz, GatherProxy, and FreeProxyLists.net to be the top free proxy list providers as of 2024. But new proxy lists keep popping up all the time.
When choosing a free proxy list, look for ones with a large number of IP addresses, frequent updates, and flexible filtering options. Test them with your target websites to find ones that work best for your use case.
With some persistence and a good pool of proxies to rotate through, it‘s possible to scrape almost any website using only free proxy lists. As you scale up, paid proxies are worth considering to improve your success rates.
Looking to the future, free proxy lists will remain an important part of a scraper‘s toolkit, even as web scraping keeps evolving. While not perfect, they democratize access to proxies for all.
