CroxyProxy Review

CroxyProxy is quick to start and loaded every page in our test, including a JavaScript app and a login form. It gives you no country choice, YouTube would not play in our check, and its own privacy policy records your IP and the pages you visit for up to 60 days.

The short version

• Reliable in our scripted run: all 10 test page loads succeeded, at a median of 2,411 ms from click to visible content.
• No location picker on the homepage; our session exited in Poland, on an IP from the hosting company Scaleway.
• Ad slots on the homepage, one ad slot added to every proxied page and a median of 2 ad-network requests per proxied page.
• Its privacy policy lists IP address, browser, ISP, pages and clicks, with a stated aim of keeping those logs for 60 days.

At a glance

Facts checked on each site's own pages.

What we measured

Results from the scripted browsing session every proxy in this series goes through. Measured from a single connection in the EU, using test method wpb-1.1. Every proxy ran the same scripted session.

What CroxyProxy is

CroxyProxy is a free browser-based proxy at croxyproxy.com. You paste an address or a search, press the button and the site opens through CroxyProxy's servers, with a small toolbar on top for a new address and a shareable link. There is no account, no app and nothing to install, which is a large part of why it draws more visitors than any other free web proxy.

It is also bigger than one domain. Mirrors run on croxyproxy.net and croxyproxy.rocks, and BlockAway uses the same template, banner and server IP, so we treat it as CroxyProxy under a second name. The free version is funded by advertising, and a premium tier is sold through Patreon, priced by rapidseedbox and pixelscan at about $3 to $3.50 a month.

How it performed in our test

We ran CroxyProxy through the same scripted session as every proxy in this series: five target pages loaded twice each, a JavaScript app, a YouTube video and an exit IP check, from one connection in the EU. It loaded all 10 test pages, with a median of 2,411 ms from pressing its button to the target's content being visible. That puts it in the middle of the field: not the quickest, but steady, with no failed loads.

Compatibility was mostly good. The TodoMVC React app rendered and accepted a typed to-do, and the GitHub login form appeared with its username, password and submit fields. We did not sign in to any account, so whether a login stays active across pages was not measured. YouTube was the weak spot: the watch page and player loaded, but the video did not start playing in our muted playback check, even after we dismissed YouTube's cookie wall and retested. CroxyProxy advertises full video support, so your result on a different day or network may differ, but it did not pass ours.

There is no location picker on the homepage. Pixelscan reports that CroxyProxy's servers are mostly in Europe, and our session exited in Poland. The exit IP belonged to Scaleway, a cloud hosting company, rather than to a home broadband line. We did not run a formal IP-type classification, but large sites tend to treat hosting addresses with more suspicion than residential ones, which is where CAPTCHAs and block pages come from.

Ads on the free version

The homepage carries Google ad slots and a sponsored banner, and its privacy policy says advertising partners set their own cookies. Inside the proxied sites, CroxyProxy adds one ad slot to every page, in the bar above the site. It stayed empty in our automated browser, as ad networks often leave slots unfilled for scripted visits, and we saw no pop-up or interstitial. Our script also recorded a median of 2 requests per proxied page to known ad-network hosts, so ad code loads in the background.

According to pixelscan, paying for premium is what makes the ads go away. For a quick visit that is a small cost, but the free tier is funded by advertising and by the data that comes with it.

Is CroxyProxy safe?

The connection to CroxyProxy is served over HTTPS, so other people on your network cannot read which pages you open through it. The question is what CroxyProxy itself keeps. Its privacy policy says it records your IP address, browser type, internet provider, timestamps, the pages you entered and left from and the links you click, and that it aims to keep those logs for 60 days so it can answer law enforcement requests.

That is a clear, published policy, which is more than several rivals offer, but it is the opposite of anonymous browsing. The operating company is not named on the site. As with any web proxy, the operator can see the traffic that passes through it, so we would not enter passwords, payment details or anything personal through CroxyProxy or any other free proxy.

Who CroxyProxy suits

CroxyProxy fits casual, occasional use: opening a page that is blocked on your network, reading an article or sharing a proxied link with someone else. It has no published daily time or data cap, and in our run it never failed a page load.

It is a weaker fit if you need to appear in a particular country, want video to play, or care about what is logged. Shifter Web Proxy, our own tool, takes the other side of each trade: you pick one of 54 countries, the session runs on residential IPs, there are no ads, and the pages you visit are not logged. In return it is capped at 30 minutes and 100 MB a day, with a reCAPTCHA check before each session.

Pros and cons

Who CroxyProxy is for

How we scored it

Measured from a single connection in the EU, using test method wpb-1.1. Every proxy ran the same scripted session. Countries are scored on a log scale, because a jump from 3 to 20 countries matters far more to a visitor than one from 100 to 200, and only countries with residential exits count: every exit we observed is classified by its network, consumer ISP or hosting provider. Ads are scored on three parts: ads on the landing page (25%), ad slots added to proxied pages, filled or empty (45%) and ad-network code loaded while you browse, seen or not (30%). Any ad-network request caps that part at 6 out of 10.

Every criterion is calculated from published facts or our own measurements and normalised across all the free web proxies we track, Shifter included. Nothing is scored by hand, so a proxy that beats ours on a criterion scores higher on it.

• Speed measured

  Weight 22% 7.9/10

  2411 ms median page load against 16 proxies we timed, multiplied by the 100% of test pages that loaded.

• Countries measured

  Weight 17% 0/10

  Every exit we observed was on a hosting or cloud provider's network, so none count as residential. Log scale against the widest residential choice in the field (54).

• Ads measured

  Weight 22% 4/10

  Landing page ads: yes. Ad slots added to proxied pages, filled or empty: 1. Ad-network requests per proxied page: 2.

• Compatibility measured

  Weight 22% 5/10

  Passed 1 of 2 checks (YouTube playback, staying logged in, a JavaScript app).

• Privacy

  Weight 17% 3/10

  Operator named: no. Logging: records visitor activity. HTTPS to the proxy: yes.