As of October 7, 2026, Shifter has the largest pool of live US IPs, more than Oxylabs and Bright Data, at a fraction of the cost.Shifter now has the largest pool of live US IPs

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Free Web Proxy

Choose a country on the map or in the list, then open any website through a real residential IP there.

United StatesResidential IP
  • Real residential IPs
  • 54 countries
  • No ads, no signup

How it works

How our free web proxy works

Three steps, no downloads. The proxy runs entirely in your browser and opens the site in its own tab, so this page stays where you left it.

  1. 1

    Enter a website

    Type or paste any address, such as example.com. You do not need the https part; the proxy adds it for you.

  2. 2

    Choose a country

    Pick one of 54 countries. Your visit leaves Shifter's network from a residential IP in that country, so the site sees a local visitor.

  3. 3

    Browse in a new tab

    Select Browse, complete a quick check, and the site opens in its own tab with back, forward, reload and a country switcher.

Diagram: a request sent through a datacenter proxy ends at an access denied page, while the same request sent through Shifter Web Proxy leaves from a residential home IP in the chosen country and the page loads.

Residential exit IPs

A proxy browser that looks like a real local visitor

Most free web proxies send every visitor through a handful of rented servers in one or two data centers. Websites recognize those addresses quickly, which is why free proxies so often hit block pages, access denied errors or the wrong country.

Shifter Web Proxy exits through residential IP addresses: real home broadband connections in 54 countries, from the same network our customers use for web data collection. To the website, your visit looks like an ordinary person browsing from that country, so pages load the way locals see them.

You also choose the country yourself. Many free proxies offer two or three server regions at most; here you pick the exact country, from the United States and the United Kingdom to Brazil, Japan and South Africa.

Countries

Browse from 54 countries

Pick a country in the form above, or open its page below to browse from there.

Use cases

What you can do with a free web proxy

Unblock websites that are not available in your country

Plenty of websites decide what to show you from your IP address alone. A news site may hide articles outside its home market, a store may refuse to load for foreign visitors, and a government portal may only answer local connections. A web proxy changes the address the site sees, so the page loads as it would for someone living there.

Because the exit IP is residential, it belongs to a home internet connection rather than a server rack. Sites that block known datacenter ranges, which is what most free proxies run on, usually let it through.

Watch YouTube and other video from another country

Video platforms license content country by country, so the same link can play in one place and show an error in another. Open the video page through a country where it is available to see what viewers there see, including local trending lists and regional recommendations.

Video uses data quickly, and the free allowance is 100 MB a day, enough for short clips and previews rather than full films. For longer viewing or regular checks, a residential proxy plan gives you the same IPs without a daily cap.

Reach sites on restricted school or work networks

Shared networks often filter whole categories of websites, and sometimes they catch pages you genuinely need for study or work, such as documentation, research papers or a supplier's portal. Opening the page through the web proxy can get you to that content without installing anything on a managed computer.

Use it responsibly: your school or employer sets the rules for its network, and the proxy does not change them. If a site is blocked on purpose, ask the network administrator first.

Check geo-restricted content and local prices

Airlines, hotels, software vendors and online stores regularly show different prices, currencies and offers by country. Load the same product page from the United States, Germany and Japan and compare what each market is charged, without asking a friend abroad for a screenshot.

The same works for streaming catalogues, app store listings and cookie banners, which often change with the visitor's location.

Verify ads and search results by country

Marketers use a web proxy to see their own campaigns as a customer abroad sees them: whether an ad appears, which landing page it opens and whether the localized version loads correctly. SEO teams use it to check how a page ranks and renders in a local search engine.

For one-off checks the free proxy is enough. For daily monitoring across many keywords or markets, our residential proxies and SERP API do the same job at scale.

Keep your own IP address private while browsing

Every site you visit through the proxy sees a Shifter residential IP instead of yours, which keeps your home or office address out of its logs. That is useful on public Wi-Fi, when reading about a competitor, or when you simply do not want a site to know where you are.

A web proxy protects the tab you browse in, not your whole device. Anything you type into a site, such as a name or an email address, still identifies you to that site.

Related reading: How to get around geolocation restrictions legally

Web proxy vs VPN vs residential proxy

All three hide your IP address from the sites you visit. They differ in how much of your traffic they cover, how you set them up and what they are built for.

Feature Web proxy VPN Residential proxy
Coverage One browser tabWhole deviceAny app or script
Setup NoneInstall an appProxy settings or API
Exit IP Residential (Shifter)DatacenterResidential
Countries 54 with ShifterDepends on provider195+, city and ISP
Best for Quick checksPublic Wi-FiScraping and automation
Price Free, 30 min a dayMonthly planPay per GB

Need proxies for an app, a scraper or a team? Explore residential proxies

Shifter Web Proxy vs CroxyProxy, ProxySite and Proxyium

The three most visited free web proxies, compared on what each one publishes. We checked every site ourselves; anything we could not confirm is marked as such.

Feature Shifter Web Proxy CroxyProxy ProxySite.com Proxyium
Countries 54 countriesNo choice2 (US, EU)3, two marked slow
Exit IP ResidentialDatacenterDatacenterDatacenter
Ads NoneYesYesYes
Logs No page logsRecords activityNo policyNo policy
All web proxy alternatives Web proxy reviews

Safety and privacy

Is this web proxy safe?

Free proxies make money somehow, and with most of them it is advertising: banners on the landing page, pop-ups inside the sites you visit, and ad networks setting their own cookies along the way. Some also keep a record of your IP address and the pages you open for weeks. Shifter Web Proxy shows no ads at all, because the business behind it is selling proxies, not attention.

We do not log the pages you visit. To enforce the free allowance, the service keeps one anonymous counter per browser: a random identifier, stored only as a hash, with the time and data you have used today. It does not record your IP address, and it is not linked to a name or an account, because there is no account.

For HTTPS websites, the encrypted connection is set up inside your browser tab, so our gateway relays traffic it cannot read. The gateway does need the name of the site you are connecting to, as every proxy does, and it does not write it to a log.

The quick check before each session is Google reCAPTCHA, which follows Google's privacy policy. It keeps bots from using up the network that real visitors share.

  • No ads, no pop-ups, no injected scripts
  • No signup and no email address
  • No log of the pages you visit
  • Residential exit IPs, never your own

One sensible rule applies to any proxy, ours included: do not enter passwords or card details on a site you do not trust. Read more in Are residential proxies legal?

Pricing

Need more than 30 minutes a day

The free web proxy gives every visitor 30 minutes and 100 MB a day, reset at midnight UTC. Some sites, such as streaming services and pages with heavy sign-in flows, may not work through any web proxy. When you need more time, more traffic, or proxies for your own tools and scripts, the network behind this page is available on a plan.

Pricing

Simple, transparent pricing

Fixed monthly plans with included bandwidth. No hidden fees. Scale as your usage grows.

Starter71% OFF
$3.50/GB
$1.00/GB
$175$50/month·50 GB

What's included

  • 50 GB bandwidth
  • HTTP(S) + SOCKS5
  • City & ASN targeting
  • API access
  • Priority support
Start Free Trial
Basic67% OFF
$3.00/GB
$1.00/GB
$300$100/month·100 GB

What's included

  • 100 GB bandwidth
  • HTTP(S) + SOCKS5
  • City & ASN targeting
  • API access
  • Priority support
Start Free Trial
BusinessPopular70% OFF
$2.50/GB
$0.75/GB
$500$149/month·200 GB

What's included

  • 200 GB bandwidth
  • HTTP(S) + SOCKS5
  • City & ASN targeting
  • API access
  • Priority support
Start Free Trial
Growth63% OFF
$2.00/GB
$0.75/GB
$800$299/month·400 GB

What's included

  • 400 GB bandwidth
  • HTTP(S) + SOCKS5
  • City & ASN targeting
  • API access
  • Priority support
Start Free Trial
FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Answers to common questions about free web proxies and Shifter Web Proxy.

A web proxy is a website that fetches other websites for you. You enter an address, the proxy requests the page from its own IP address and shows you the result, so the site you visit sees the proxy rather than you. It works inside your browser and needs no software or settings.

No. Using a web proxy is legal in most countries, and companies use them every day to test websites and check ads. What matters is what you do through it: breaking a site's terms, infringing copyright or accessing something unlawfully stays unlawful with or without a proxy. Some countries restrict proxy and VPN use, so check local rules if you are unsure.

Shifter Web Proxy shows no ads, needs no account and does not log the pages you visit. For HTTPS websites the encrypted connection is set up inside your browser tab, so our gateway relays traffic it cannot read. As with any proxy, avoid entering passwords or payment details on sites you do not trust.

A VPN encrypts everything your device sends, which makes it the better choice on untrusted networks such as hotel Wi-Fi. A web proxy only covers the tab you browse in, but it needs no install and lets you switch countries in seconds. For privacy on a single site, a reputable web proxy is enough; for your whole device, use a VPN.

Websites see the proxy's IP address, not yours, so they cannot trace the visit back to your connection from the IP alone. They can still recognize you from what you share, such as a login, a cookie you accept or details you type in. Your own network can also see that you connected to the proxy.

The most common reasons are seeing a website from another country, reaching a page that is not available where you are, checking local prices or ads, and keeping your own IP address out of a site's logs. A proxy browser does all of this without installing anything.

Yes. Pick from 54 countries before you start, and switch country from the toolbar while you browse. Changing country starts a fresh session with the website, so you may need to sign in again.

Yes. Every visitor gets 30 minutes and 100 MB of browsing a day at no cost. There are no ads because Shifter sells proxies: the free tool lets you try the same residential network our customers pay for, and people who need more upgrade to a plan.

No. There is no signup and nothing to install. You complete a short reCAPTCHA check before each new session, which keeps automated abuse off the network.

Yes. The web proxy runs in current versions of Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge on phones, tablets and computers. Private browsing modes that block storage can stop your daily allowance from being remembered, but browsing still works.

Pages take a little longer to load than they do directly, because each request travels through the proxy and a residential connection in the country you chose. Nearby countries feel faster than distant ones. The rest of your connection is not affected.

A web proxy is a website you browse through. A residential proxy is a network address you plug into any browser, app or script, with control over country, city and IP rotation. Shifter Web Proxy is built on our residential network, so it is a free way to try the same IPs before you buy a plan.
Get started

Use the same residential IPs in any app or script

The free web proxy covers one tab in 54 countries. A residential plan opens the full network to your browser, scraper or automation.

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