The Tool Desk
Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →There is no single “best free proxy.” A permanent managed quota, a one-month trial, API credits, and a public list of independently operated IPs are different products with different reliability and security profiles. For a small scraper, start with a provider-managed offer whose limits and authentication are documented. Use public lists only for low-risk experiments, never for credentials or sensitive traffic.
Free proxy options at a glance
The table separates recurring plans, trials, scraping APIs and open lists. Quotas and eligibility can change, so confirm the provider’s current account terms before production use.
| Option | What is free | Evidence and limits | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Webshare | Permanent managed tier | Webshare’s homepage documents 10 free proxies. Its opened page does not state a bandwidth cap; AIMultiple reported 1 GB/month for 10 shared datacenter proxies (secondary-source figure). | Small, recurring tests needing an account and stable dashboard |
| Oxylabs | Managed datacenter allocation and separate trials | Oxylabs describes five US datacenter IPs, 5 GB of traffic and one month from activation. It separately advertises a seven-day proxy trial and a Web Scraper API trial of up to 2,000 results, without a credit card. | Short evaluation with a stated traffic allowance |
| Bright Data | Product-specific managed tier | A Bright Data comparison describes 5,000 free requests/month for selected managed scraping products. AIMultiple separately lists 15 free datacenter IPs and 2 GB/month; the sources may describe different products. | Testing a managed scraping workflow after confirming the exact product |
| ProxyScrape | Public list and utilities | Its pricing page lists a free proxy list, checker, online checker, filter, browser extension and API, alongside paid products. No managed free bandwidth quota is established here. | Disposable connectivity checks and learning |
| ScraperAPI | Scraping API credits | TechRadar reported 1,000 API credits/month, up to five concurrent connections, and 5,000 introductory credits for seven days. These are secondary-source claims; verify current official pricing. | When you want an extraction API rather than proxy credentials |
| IPRoyal | Public-list lead | AIMultiple indexes an IPRoyal list, but the reviewed evidence does not establish current endpoints, uptime or a managed free quota. | Discovery only; validate the provider page first |
| Geonode | Public-list lead | AIMultiple describes a region-based list. Current endpoint quality, authentication and limits were not established. | Finding region-specific test IPs, with strict validation |
| HideMy.name or Spys.one | Searchable/filterable public lists | AIMultiple describes HideMy.name as searchable and Spys.one as filterable with latency/uptime data. Those descriptions are discovery leads, not current performance guarantees. | Manual experiments where failed requests are acceptable |
IPRoyal, Geonode, HideMy.name and Spys.one are included as public-list discovery options, not ranked performance winners. No comparable independent benchmark supports a universal ranking of these eight choices.
How to choose a free proxy for scraping
1. Identify what “free” means
- Recurring quota: renews monthly, usually with an account.
- Trial: expires after a stated period or activation event.
- API credits: you call a scraping endpoint; you may never receive raw proxy addresses.
- Public list: independently operated endpoints with no equivalent service-level expectation.
Do not compare “10 proxies” directly with “5,000 requests.” One measures addresses; the other measures API work.
#1 Best Overall
- 【Five Gigabit Ports】1 Gigabit WAN Port plus 2 Gigabit WAN/LAN Ports plus 2 Gigabit LAN Port. Up to 3 WAN ports optimize bandwidth usage through one device.
- 【One USB WAN Port】Mobile broadband via 4G/3G modem is supported for WAN backup by connecting to the USB port. For complete list of compatible 4G/3G modems, please visit TP-Link website.
- 【Abundant Security Features】Advanced firewall policies, DoS defense, IP/MAC/URL filtering, speed test and more security functions protect your network and data.
- 【Highly Secure VPN】Supports up to 20× LAN-to-LAN IPsec, 16× OpenVPN, 16× L2TP, and 16× PPTP VPN connections.
- Security - SPI Firewall, VPN Pass through, FTP/H.323/PPTP/SIP/IPsec ALG, DoS Defence, Ping of Death and Local Management. Standards and Protocols IEEE 802.3, 802.3u, 802.3ab, IEEE 802.3x, IEEE 802.1q
2. Check IP type and control
Datacenter addresses are often adequate for public pages and development. Residential or mobile networks may be offered separately and are not implied by a free datacenter tier. Confirm whether addresses rotate, whether you can select a country or city, and whether sticky sessions are available.
3. Calculate quota and concurrency
Estimate requests, response size, retries and parallel workers. A monthly bandwidth cap can be exhausted by large pages even when request counts are low. API credits may count successful and failed attempts differently, so read the billing definition before enabling retries.
4. Match the integration
Confirm HTTP(S) versus SOCKS support, username/password format, IP allow-list requirements, browser-extension support and whether your scraper can set a per-request proxy. An API product such as ScraperAPI is integrated by URL and parameters, not by configuring a local proxy server.
5. Treat privacy as a requirement
A free endpoint operator can observe destination hosts and traffic metadata, and a malicious intermediary can alter responses. Never send passwords, session cookies, API keys, payment data or private customer information through an untrusted public proxy. Use TLS, but remember that the proxy still sees connection metadata and can interfere with poorly validated clients.
What the security evidence says about public free proxies
The MADWeb 2024 study by Naif Mehanna, Walter Rudametkin, Pierre Laperdrix and Antoine Vastel examined 640,600 proxies collected from 11 providers over 30 months. Only 34.5% of the collected proxies were active at least once during testing; the researchers identified 4,452 vulnerabilities on proxy IP addresses and 16,923 proxies that manipulated content. These figures describe that collected sample and period, not every current managed plan.
Rank #2
- 【AC1200 Dual-band Wireless Router】Simultaneous dual-band with wireless speed up to 300 Mbps (2.4GHz) + 867 Mbps (5GHz). 2.4GHz band can handles some simple tasks like emails or web browsing while bandwidth intensive tasks such as gaming or 4K video streaming can be handled by the 5GHz band.*Speed tests are conducted on a local network. Real-world speeds may differ depending on your network configuration.*
- 【Easy Setup】Please refer to the User Manual and the Unboxing & Setup video guide on Amazon for detailed setup instructions and methods for connecting to the Internet.
- 【Pocket-friendly】Lightweight design(145g) which designed for your next trip or adventure. Alongside its portable, compact design makes it easy to take with you on the go.
- 【Full Gigabit Ports】Gigabit Wireless Internet Router with 2 Gigabit LAN ports and 1 Gigabit WAN ports, ideal for lots of internet plan and allow you to connect your wired devices directly.
- 【Keep your Internet Safe】IPv6 supported. OpenVPN & WireGuard pre-installed, compatible with 30+ VPN service providers. Cloudflare encryption supported to protect the privacy.
The authors conclude: “Ultimately, our research reveals that the use of free web proxies poses significant risks to users’ privacy and security.” Read the study at MADWeb 2024. A proxy does not grant permission to scrape a destination. Check the site’s terms, robots directives where applicable, authentication rules and local law, and keep request rates conservative.
Provider notes and practical starting points
Webshare: the clearest recurring free allocation
Webshare explicitly documents a permanent free plan with 10 proxies. The available homepage text does not establish its bandwidth limit. AIMultiple’s August 2026 comparison reports 1 GB/month, but treat that as a secondary figure and verify the limit in your account. This is the most straightforward option here when you need a recurring, account-based test rather than a scraped list.
Oxylabs: separate the allocation from the trials
Oxylabs’ guide describes five US datacenter IPs, 5 GB and one month from activation. The same guide separately advertises a seven-day proxy trial and a Web Scraper API trial of up to 2,000 results, with no credit card. Do not add the trial allowance to the five-IP allocation; they are different offers with different conditions. See Oxylabs’ explanation and confirm eligibility before coding around it.
Quick wins for a faster PC:
Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Bright Data: verify the exact product
Bright Data’s comparison article describes 5,000 free requests per month for selected managed scraping products without a card. AIMultiple lists a separate description of 15 free datacenter IPs and 2 GB/month. Because the reviewed sources do not reconcile those figures, identify the product name in your dashboard and record whether its allowance is requests, traffic or raw IP access before you build a crawler.
Rank #3
- New-Gen WiFi Standard – WiFi 6(802.11ax) standard supporting MU-MIMO and OFDMA technology for better efficiency and throughput.Antenna : External antenna x 4. Processor : Dual-core (4 VPE). Power Supply : AC Input : 110V~240V(50~60Hz), DC Output : 12 V with max. 1.5A current.
- Ultra-fast WiFi Speed – RT-AX1800S supports 1024-QAM for dramatically faster wireless connections
- Increase Capacity and Efficiency – Supporting not only MU-MIMO but also OFDMA technique to efficiently allocate channels, communicate with multiple devices simultaneously
- 5 Gigabit ports – One Gigabit WAN port and four Gigabit LAN ports, 10X faster than 100–Base T Ethernet.
- Commercial-grade Security Anywhere – Protect your home network with AiProtection Classic, powered by Trend Micro. And when away from home, ASUS Instant Guard gives you a one-click secure VPN.
ProxyScrape and other public lists
ProxyScrape offers a free list and checking/filtering tools. IPRoyal, Geonode, HideMy.name and Spys.one are also indexed by AIMultiple as searchable or region-oriented list sources. Test every endpoint immediately for DNS, TLS, status code, latency, content integrity and repeatability. Remove an IP after one suspicious response rather than escalating retries.
ScraperAPI: an adjacent API, not a raw proxy list
TechRadar’s February 9, 2026 review reports a free 1,000-credit monthly tier, five concurrent connections and 5,000 introductory credits for seven days. Because these details are secondary-source claims, check the current ScraperAPI pricing page before relying on them. This model can be simpler than proxy rotation when you want rendered or extracted responses through one authenticated endpoint.
A safe test workflow
- Create a separate account and use no production credentials.
- Start with one target domain that permits your intended access.
- Send a small number of requests with a realistic User-Agent and a delay.
- Log proxy address, timestamp, status, response length, redirect chain and a content hash.
- Compare a direct request with the proxied response for unexpected script injection, altered links or missing content.
- Set hard limits for requests, concurrency, bandwidth and total spend before increasing volume.
- Stop when the destination blocks or rate-limits you; changing proxies is not permission to bypass controls.
Performance, reliability and cost controls
- Use bounded concurrency: begin with one or two workers and increase only while latency and error rates remain stable.
- Retry selectively: retry connection resets and 502/503 responses with exponential backoff; do not blindly retry 401, 403 or CAPTCHA pages.
- Cache responses: avoid repeatedly downloading unchanged pages and wasting traffic quotas.
- Validate content: a 200 status can still be a block page, empty shell or injected response.
- Measure by provider and endpoint: record success, median latency and useful-content rate using your own disclosed method; vendor claims and review-site tests are not directly comparable.
- Plan for exhaustion: expose remaining credits or bytes in monitoring and shut down workers before the allowance reaches zero.
Common failures and fixes
Authentication succeeds but every request is blocked
Check that the target accepts the proxy’s IP range and that your credentials are attached to the correct host and port. A managed API may require its own URL format rather than a CONNECT proxy.
Connections time out
Test DNS and TLS from the same runtime, lower concurrency, set a finite connect/read timeout and discard the endpoint after repeated failures. Public lists often contain dead or overloaded addresses.
Rank #4
- 【DUAL BAND WIFI 7 TRAVEL ROUTER】Products with US, UK, EU, AU Plug; Dual band network with wireless speed 688Mbps (2.4G)+2882Mbps (5G); Dual 2.5G Ethernet Ports (1x WAN and 1x LAN Port); USB 3.0 port.
- 【NETWORK CONTROL WITH TOUCHSCREEN SIMPLICITY】Slate 7’s touchscreen interface lets you scan QR codes for quick Wi-Fi, monitor speed in real time, toggle VPN on/off, and switch providers directly on the display. Color-coded indicators provide instant network status updates for Ethernet, Tethering, Repeater, and Cellular modes, offering a seamless, user-friendly experience.
- 【OpenWrt 23.05 FIRMWARE】The Slate 7 (GL-BE3600) is a high-performance Wi-Fi 7 travel router, built with OpenWrt 23.05 (Kernel 5.4.213) for maximum customization and advanced networking capabilities. With 512MB storage, total customization with open-source freedom and flexible installation of OpenWrt plugins.
- 【VPN CLIENT & SERVER】OpenVPN and WireGuard are pre-installed, compatible with 30+ VPN service providers (active subscription required). Simply log in to your existing VPN account with our portable wifi device, and Slate 7 automatically encrypts all network traffic within the connected network. Max. VPN speed of 100 Mbps (OpenVPN); 540 Mbps (WireGuard). *Speed tests are conducted on a local network. Real-world speeds may differ depending on your network configuration.*
- 【PERFECT PORTABLE WIFI ROUTER FOR TRAVEL】The Slate 7 is an ideal portable internet device perfect for international travel. With its mini size and travel-friendly features, the pocket Wi-Fi router is the perfect companion for travelers in need of a secure internet connectivity on the go in which includes hotels or cruise ships.
The response is a CAPTCHA or blank page
Record it as a failed fetch, not a successful page. Slow the request rate, verify JavaScript requirements and follow the site’s access policy. Do not treat a new proxy as a guarantee of access.
Your quota disappears quickly
Inspect response sizes, redirects, retries and parallel jobs. API credits may be consumed per attempt; confirm the provider’s counting rules and add caching.
Content appears modified
Compare hashes and key DOM fields with a direct request, check certificates and remove the endpoint. Never transmit sensitive data through that address.
Free tools Windows power users keep installed
One-click scans. No signup required.
Or skip the browser setup
If your actual task is collecting clean website images rather than routing a crawler, ScreenshotNeo provides a one-call screenshot API. It accepts cookie or consent banners before capture and removes more than 60 known consent platforms, newsletter popups and chat widgets; bot checks, blank pages, failed loads and cache hits are not billed, with the result identified by X-Page-Verdict and X-Billed headers. Its MCP server lets Claude, Cursor and other MCP clients call take_screenshot, get_page_info and capture_pdf.
Using the documented API, save a WebP image with cURL:
Best Value
- Next-Gen Gigabit Wi-Fi 6 Speeds: 2402 Mbps on 5 GHz and 574 Mbps on 2.4 GHz bands ensure smoother streaming and faster downloads; support VPN server and VPN client¹
- A More Responsive Experience: Enjoy smooth gaming, video streaming, and live feeds simultaneously. OFDMA makes your Wi-Fi stronger by allowing multiple clients to share one band at the same time, cutting latency and jitter.²
- Expanded Wi-Fi Coverage: 4 high-gain external antennas and Beamforming technology combine to extend strong, reliable, Wi-Fi throughout your home.
- Improved Battery Life: Target Wake Time helps your devices to communicate efficiently while consuming less power.
- Improved Cooling Design: No heat ups, no throttles. A larger heat sink and redefined case design cools the WiFi 6 system and enables your network to stay at top speeds in more versatile environments.
curl -G "https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot" -d access_key=YOUR_API_KEY --data-urlencode url=https://stripe.com -o shot.webpPython:
import requests
r = requests.get("https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot", params={"access_key": "YOUR_API_KEY", "url": "https://stripe.com"}, timeout=90)
open("shot.webp", "wb").write(r.content)Node.js:
const q = new URLSearchParams({ access_key: 'YOUR_API_KEY', url: 'https://stripe.com' });
const res = await fetch(`https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot?${q}`);See the full parameter reference in the ScreenshotNeo documentation. Every plan includes its features; the Free plan provides 1,000 screenshots per month with no card, and paid plans start at $5 for 3,000 shots. Create a free ScreenshotNeo account.
FAQ
Are free public proxies safe for logging in?
No. Operator identity and traffic handling are uncertain. Keep credentials and sensitive requests off public endpoints.
What’s actually slowing this PC down?
Pick the symptom - the matching free tool is one click away.
Is an API trial the same as a free proxy?
No. An API trial grants calls or results through a provider endpoint; it may not expose proxy addresses or support arbitrary proxy configuration.
Which option should I try first?
For a recurring, small test, begin with Webshare’s documented 10-proxy free plan and verify its current quota. For a short, defined evaluation, review Oxylabs’ five-IP, 5-GB, one-month offer and its separate trial terms.
Can a proxy make scraping lawful?
No. Review the destination’s rules and applicable law independently; a proxy changes network routing, not your obligations.
Quick Recap
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
