ProxyOrb Review

ProxyOrb is one of the few free proxies that got a YouTube video playing in our test, and it opened most of the pages we tried. Everything else about the session worked against it: a "Free VIP Upgrade" dialog asking us to share the site appeared before every page, loads were the slowest we measured, the JavaScript app never rendered and ads ran on the landing page and inside the session.

The short version

• The slowest proxy in our test, at a median of 8,424 ms per page, with 8 of 10 loads succeeding.
• A share-to-unlock dialog claiming the free channel was queued appeared on every page we opened.
• YouTube played on one of two loads, a result most free proxies did not manage; the React test app failed both times.
• Ads on the landing page and inside the session, with a median of 10 ad-network requests per proxied page. No location choice.

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 ProxyOrb is

ProxyOrb is a young free web proxy, founded on 15 January 2025 according to its own site. It presents itself as an online proxy browser, with a "Start Proxy Browser" button, a browser extension, a blog and a GitHub link. There is no paid tier; the site says it is 100% free, and Google AdSense pays for it.

Its homepage claims a lot: high-definition YouTube, a zero-logs policy and a "Trusted by 5M+ Users" badge. We could not verify the logging or user figures. A YouTube video did play once in our test, but we did not check its quality. A post on its own site explains how to spot the real ProxyOrb, a sign that copycats use the name, so check that you are on proxyorb.com.

How it performed in our test

Timed from the click to visible content over ten loads, ProxyOrb took a median of 8,424 ms, the slowest of every proxy we measured, and 8 of 10 loads succeeded. One Wikipedia load and one YouTube load never showed the page.

Part of that time is a dialog. Every time we pressed "Start Proxy Browser", a "Free VIP Upgrade" box appeared, with a "Current Load" badge marked Full, saying the free channel was queued, and asking us to share ProxyOrb on social networks to unlock a VIP channel for 4K streaming. Our script pressed its skip button, as a visitor would, and the page then loaded; the time spent on the dialog stays in the load time. We cannot verify the queue claim. On our exit IP check the dialog kept coming back for the whole 45 seconds and the page never opened, so we could not record where ProxyOrb exits.

YouTube is ProxyOrb's best result. On one load the video was playing when we checked, after the page had taken more than half a minute to appear; the other load did not show the page in time. Only a handful of the free proxies we tested played the video at all, so this is real credit, with the caveat that it was slow and worked one time in two.

The TodoMVC React app did not render in either load, so JavaScript-heavy sites may not work. The GitHub login form did render; logging in was not part of our test.

Ads were present throughout. The landing page showed four ad slots and made dozens of ad-network requests while it loaded. Inside the session our count of added ads and interstitials came to a median of one per page, and proxied pages made a median of 10 ad-network requests. We saw an ad banner sitting under the share dialog. We saw no pop-ups or new tabs.

There is no location picker in the free flow, so you cannot choose a country.

Is ProxyOrb safe?

ProxyOrb runs over HTTPS and says it keeps zero logs. That statement is its own and we have no way to check it. A dialog that asks every visitor to share the site to get past a queue is a growth tactic rather than a security problem, but it is worth knowing that you can skip it.

Because ProxyOrb points to clones of itself, the first safety step is making sure you are on the real domain. After that, the usual rule applies: use a free web proxy for public pages, and do not enter passwords or payment details through it.

Who it suits

ProxyOrb suits someone who mainly wants to try a video through a web proxy and is patient with dialogs, ads and slow loads.

It is a poor fit for quick checks, JavaScript apps or choosing a country. If you need a specific country and no ads, Shifter Web Proxy offers 54 countries of residential IPs, within a free allowance of 30 minutes and 100 MB a day and a reCAPTCHA before each session. Video eats into that daily data quickly.

Pros and cons

Who ProxyOrb 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 27% 0/10

  8424 ms median page load against 16 proxies we timed, multiplied by the 80% of test pages that loaded.

• Ads measured

  Weight 27% 3.4/10

  Landing page ads: yes. Ad slots added to proxied pages, filled or empty: 1. Ad-network requests per proxied page: 10.

• Compatibility measured

  Weight 27% 5/10

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

• Privacy

  Weight 20% 10/10

  Operator named: yes. Logging: states it does not log browsing. HTTPS to the proxy: yes.