Every proxy in our list has an anonymity level: transparent, anonymous or elite. The label answers one question — what does the destination website learn about you and about the proxy? Here is what each level means and how we determine it.
Why headers matter
When a request passes through an HTTP proxy, the proxy may add its own headers. The most common ones are:
X-Forwarded-For— the IP address of the original client, i.e. yours.X-Real-IP,Client-IP,Forwarded— the same information under other names.Via— a note that the request went through a proxy, often with its software name.Proxy-Connection,X-Proxy-ID— other traces of a proxy.
The website can read all of them. The anonymity level depends on which ones arrive.
Transparent proxies
A transparent proxy hides nothing. The website sees the proxy's IP as the connection source, but your real IP is right there in X-Forwarded-For or a similar header. Such proxies are typically corporate or ISP caches that were never meant to provide privacy.
Use them only when hiding your IP does not matter — for example, to test caching or access a resource that whitelists the proxy's address.
Anonymous proxies
An anonymous proxy removes your IP but announces itself: it adds Via or another proxy header. The website does not know who you are, but it knows that a proxy is in use. Some sites react to that with captchas, limited functionality or a block.
Anonymous proxies are fine for reading public pages, downloading files and many scraping tasks.
Elite proxies
An elite (high-anonymity) proxy adds nothing. The request reaches the website exactly as your client sent it, just from a different IP address. From the headers alone, the visit looks like an ordinary user. See the elite proxy list.
Elite does not mean undetectable. Websites can still compare the IP with databases of known proxies and data centers, look at TCP fingerprints or notice unusual behaviour. Elite only guarantees that the proxy itself does not betray you.
What about SOCKS proxies?
SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 proxies do not touch the content of your traffic, so they cannot add headers. A working SOCKS proxy is effectively elite. What remains is DNS: resolve host names through the proxy (socks5h://) so your DNS requests do not leak.
How we test anonymity
Our checker sends each proxy a request to our own judge server. The judge records the exact headers and the source IP of every incoming request and compares them with the checker's real address:
- Our real IP appears in any header → transparent.
- No real IP, but proxy headers are present → anonymous.
- The request arrives clean → elite.
The test is repeated about once a minute because proxies change behaviour — some sit behind load balancers with differently configured nodes.
Check a proxy yourself
Send a request through the proxy to any service that echoes headers back, for example:
curl -x http://IP:PORT http://httpbin.org/headers
Look for your own IP and for Via or X-Forwarded-For in the output. Use plain http:// for this test: with HTTPS the proxy only builds a tunnel and cannot add headers at all.
Which level do you need?
- Privacy matters, or the site should not know about the proxy → elite.
- Your IP must be hidden, but a proxy notice is acceptable → anonymous or elite.
- Hiding the IP does not matter → any level.
Filter the free proxy list by anonymity with one click, or open the anonymous proxy list directly.