proxyprobe

Check a list of proxies for liveness, latency, exit IP and anonymity — one file, one dependency.

$ proxyprobe proxies.txt --geo
PROXY                              OK   MS    EXIT IP          ANONYMITY    LOCATION        ERROR
---------------------------------  ---  ----  ---------------  -----------  --------------  ---------------------
http://user:***@gw.example.com:80  yes  312   203.0.113.44     elite        Tokyo Japan
socks5://198.51.100.7:1080         yes  1180  198.51.100.7     transparent  Frankfurt Germany
http://10.0.0.9:3128               no   -     -                -                            ConnectTimeout: timed out

2/3 working  |  312ms median  |  1 elite, 1 transparent

Most "proxy checker" scripts only tell you whether a connection opened. That is the least interesting thing about a proxy. proxyprobe also answers the questions that actually decide whether a proxy is usable:

• Does it leak my real IP? Graded transparent / anonymous / elite by comparing your direct IP against what the proxy forwards, and by inspecting Via, X-Forwarded-For and friends.
• Where does it actually exit? The advertised location and the real one often differ.
• How slow is it really? Measured on a full request, not a TCP handshake.

Install

pip install "httpx[socks]"
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/roamproxy/proxyprobe/main/proxyprobe.py
python proxyprobe.py proxies.txt

It is a single file with no packaging required. Drop it in a repo, a container, or a CI job and run it.

Usage

proxyprobe proxies.txt                 # table output
proxyprobe proxies.txt --json          # machine readable
proxyprobe proxies.txt --geo           # add country/city
proxyprobe proxies.txt --working-only  # drop the dead ones
cat proxies.txt | proxyprobe -         # read stdin
proxyprobe proxies.txt -c 100 -t 5     # 100 in parallel, 5s timeout

Proxy list format — one per line, # comments and blank lines ignored:

http://user:pass@host:8080
socks5://host:1080
host:8080                 # scheme defaults to http

Options

Exit code is 0 if at least one proxy worked, 1 if none did — so it drops straight into CI or a shell pipeline:

proxyprobe proxies.txt --working-only --json > alive.json || echo "all proxies down"

Anonymity grades

Grading needs a baseline, so proxyprobe first fetches your direct IP once. If that fails it degrades safely: a proxy is never labelled transparent without a baseline to compare against.

Passwords are masked

Credentials are stripped from every output path, so results are safe to paste into an issue or a CI log:

http://user:hunter2@host:80   ->   http://user:***@host:80

Passwords containing @ and : are handled correctly.

Privacy

By default proxyprobe talks to api.ipify.org (IP echo), httpbin.org (header echo) and, only with --geo, ip-api.com. All three are overridable — point them at your own endpoints if you would rather not route a proxy list through third parties:

proxyprobe proxies.txt --echo-url https://your-host/ip --headers-url https://your-host/headers

Nothing else is sent anywhere. There is no telemetry.

Development

pip install "httpx[socks]" pytest
pytest -q

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Maintained by Roam, a residential and datacenter proxy provider. proxyprobe works with any proxy from any provider, and always will — we built it because we needed it ourselves.