The short answer
- 1 GonzoProxy Widest protocol support Visit site
- 2 Proxy-Seller Cheapest SOCKS5 traffic Visit site
- 3 NodeMaven Best for UDP Visit site
11 best proxies for SOCKS5, compared
| # | Provider | Fit | From | Readers | Protocols | Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4.5/5 | $2 / GB | 88% | SOCKS4, SOCKS5, HTTP, HTTPS | ||
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The only provider here whose record lists SOCKS4, SOCKS5, HTTP and HTTPS, with unlimited concurrent connections and sticky sessions claimed up to 72 hours. Good for this job
Watch out
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| 2 | 4.5/5 | $0.30 / GB | 96% | HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS5 | ||
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HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5 over a 47M+ pool in 220+ locations at $0.30/GB — the lowest published rate here, on the widest location list. Good for this job
Watch out
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| 3 | 4.3/5 | $2.20 / GB | 88% | SOCKS5, HTTP, HTTPS | ||
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The only provider in this table whose record states UDP, marketed on its ISP product, alongside HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5 and sticky sessions up to 24 hours. Good for this job
Watch out
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| 4 | 4.3/5 | $0.08 / GB | 100% | HTTP(S), SOCKS5 | ||
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SOCKS5 alongside HTTP(S) on a 115M+ pool with city, ZIP and ASN targeting — the finest geographic control available here through a SOCKS5 port. Good for this job
Watch out
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| 5 | 4.2/5 | $0.35 / GB | 90% | HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS5, HTTP/2 | ||
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HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS5 and HTTP/2 with unused gigabytes that never expire, over 30M+ IPs in 170+ countries at $0.35/GB. Good for this job
Watch out
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| 6 | 4.0/5 | $0.63 / GB | 86% | SOCKS5, HTTP, HTTPS | ||
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SOCKS5, HTTP and HTTPS across rotating, static residential, static datacenter, mobile and ISP on one account, from $0.63/GB with published volume tiers. Good for this job
Watch out
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| 7 | 3.9/5 | — | 81% | SOCKS5, HTTP, HTTPS | ||
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SOCKS5, HTTP and HTTPS over 80M+ claimed residential IPs at a stated 99.95% uptime, with five product lines billed separately — but no trial and no refunds. Good for this job
Watch out
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| 8 | 3.9/5 | $0.06 / GB | 100% | HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS5 | ||
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HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5 on residential, over 86M+ IPs across 200+ countries with country, state and city targeting. Good for this job
Watch out
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| 9 | 3.8/5 | $0.90 / GB | 86% | HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS5 | ||
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HTTP and SOCKS5 with unlimited concurrent sessions, and the only third-party country tests on record here: 96.8-98.7% success at 0.52-1.00s. Good for this job
Watch out
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| 10 | 3.7/5 | ₽490 / day | 83% | SOCKS5, HTTP | ||
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SOCKS5 and HTTP on carrier addresses rented from one day, with unlimited traffic for the rental period instead of per-gigabyte billing. Good for this job
Watch out
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| 11 | 3.6/5 | $2 / GB | 80% | HTTPS, SOCKS5 | ||
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HTTPS and SOCKS5 with sticky sessions up to 7 days — the longest here — plus unlimited rotation and concurrency, but only 38+ countries. Good for this job
Watch out
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Ordered by how well each provider fits this job, from the figures the providers publish, our review scores and reader votes — see our methodology.
What SOCKS5 actually is
SOCKS5 is a relay that does not read your traffic. An HTTP proxy understands the requests passing through it — it parses the headers, can rewrite them, can cache, and only knows how to handle web traffic. A SOCKS5 proxy sits a layer lower: it opens a connection on your behalf and moves bytes in both directions without caring what they mean.
That has two practical consequences. The first is reach: anything that speaks TCP goes through it, not just a browser. Mail clients, database tools, game clients, SSH, torrent clients, an antidetect browser's whole stack. The second is honesty about what it is not — SOCKS5 does not encrypt anything. It is a relay, not a tunnel, and a plain-HTTP request through a SOCKS5 proxy is just as readable to whoever runs that proxy as it would be anywhere else. The encryption you rely on is TLS inside the connection, which is why HTTPS matters at least as much here as it does without a proxy.
SOCKS5 versus HTTP proxies: which one you want
Most providers in the table sell both on the same credentials, so this is usually a choice of port rather than of plan.
- Pick SOCKS5 when the client is not a browser, when you need UDP, when the application refuses to honour an HTTP proxy setting, or when you would rather the proxy not touch your headers at all.
- Pick an HTTP proxy when you are scraping the web and want the things an HTTP-aware
proxy can do — header handling, redirect behaviour, caching — or when the tooling you already have only
understands
http_proxy. - It rarely matters for speed. SOCKS5 avoids a little parsing work, but the number you will feel is the distance to the exit address and how loaded it is, not the protocol.
One real difference worth knowing: an HTTP proxy sees the full URL of a plain-HTTP request and can log it, while a SOCKS5 proxy sees a host and a port. With HTTPS both see much the same thing — the hostname and nothing more.
What UDP support gets you, and who really has it
UDP is the headline feature of SOCKS5 over its predecessor, and it is the one most often claimed loosely. The protocol defines a UDP associate command, but a provider has to implement it, and plenty sell "SOCKS5" meaning TCP only.
It matters for a short list of jobs: DNS resolution through the proxy rather than leaking to your own resolver, QUIC and HTTP/3, voice and video, game traffic, and some torrent clients. If none of those is in your plan, TCP-only SOCKS5 will serve you perfectly. If one of them is, ask before buying rather than after — in this table NodeMaven markets UDP specifically on its ISP product, which is the clearest statement of it we have on record.
The related trap is DNS. If your client resolves names locally and only sends the resulting address
through the proxy, your ISP's resolver sees every hostname you visit regardless of how good the proxy is.
Most tools have a setting for this — in a browser it is usually called remote DNS, in curl
it is the difference between socks5 and socks5h.
How to set up a SOCKS5 proxy
SOCKS5 takes a host, a port and usually a username and password. Where to put them:
- curl:
curl --proxy socks5h://user:pass@host:port https://example.com. Usesocks5h, notsocks5— thehresolves the hostname at the proxy instead of on your machine. - Python:
pip install requests[socks], then pass{"http": "socks5h://user:pass@host:port", "https": "socks5h://..."}asproxies. - Firefox: Settings, Network Settings, Manual proxy configuration, SOCKS v5, and tick "Proxy DNS when using SOCKS v5". Chrome has no per-profile SOCKS authentication, so it needs a command line flag and usually an extension or a local relay for the credentials.
- SSH:
ssh -o ProxyCommand='nc -X 5 -x host:port %h %p' user@target, which is the usual way to reach a box whose firewall only expects traffic from one country. - System-wide on a phone or router: possible, but think first. Everything goes through it, including the apps you did not mean to route, and a SOCKS5 relay adds no encryption to any of them.
- Then verify. One request to an echo endpoint should report the exit address, not yours. Our IP checker does that in a browser, and the proxy checker will test a list of SOCKS5 addresses for liveness, speed and anonymity level before you build on them.
Free SOCKS5 proxies versus paid
We publish a free SOCKS5 list and re-check it continuously, so the table above this section is real and the addresses in it answered recently. That also puts us in a position to be blunt about the limits.
A free SOCKS5 proxy is almost always someone's open or misconfigured server, shared with whoever else found it, and its working life is often measured in hours. There is no accountability for what it logs, and because SOCKS5 adds no encryption, anything you send over plain HTTP through it is readable by whoever runs it. Nothing with a password, a payment or a personal account should ever go through one.
What a free list is genuinely good for: checking whether an application honours its SOCKS5 setting at all, seeing whether a site behaves differently from another country, testing how your code handles a dead address, and confirming a port is reachable from outside your network. Do that for free first; pay once you know what you need.
Is using a SOCKS5 proxy legal and safe?
Running your traffic through a relay is legal in most places and is the same mechanism as a corporate gateway. A few countries regulate or restrict proxy and VPN use, so if you are somewhere that does, that is the rule that governs you rather than anything on this page. None of this is legal advice.
What changes with intent and target. Using SOCKS5 to reach a service that your contract with that service forbids reaching this way is a contractual problem, not a criminal one, but it is still a problem. Using one to hide activity that is illegal in the first place does not become legal because the address changed. And on the safety side, the relevant question is not "is SOCKS5 safe" but "who runs this proxy" — on a free list the answer is nobody you can name, which is the whole reason the previous section exists.
Mistakes people make with SOCKS5
- Assuming it encrypts. It does not. Use HTTPS, and if you need the hop itself encrypted you want a VPN or an SSH tunnel, not SOCKS5.
- Leaking DNS.
socks5instead ofsocks5h, or a browser without remote DNS enabled, and every hostname still goes to your own resolver. - Buying for UDP without checking. SOCKS5 permits UDP; a given provider may not implement it. Confirm before you build on it.
- Using Chrome and expecting authentication to work. It has no per-profile SOCKS5 credential prompt. Plan for an extension, a local relay, or IP whitelisting instead.
- Routing a whole device through a free proxy. Every app on it, including the ones holding your logins, through a relay run by a stranger.
What to look for
- Stated protocol support
- We only rank providers whose own record states SOCKS5, because a protocol claim is a fact about the product and belongs to them, not to us. Several networks that probably support it are absent for that reason.
- UDP, where it is stated
- UDP is the feature SOCKS5 adds over SOCKS4, and it is the one most loosely claimed. It decides DNS through the proxy, QUIC, voice and game traffic.
- Authentication options
- Username and password works anywhere; IP whitelisting is cleaner but needs a fixed address at your end. Clients differ in what they can do, and Chrome in particular cannot prompt for SOCKS5 credentials.
- Session length
- A SOCKS5 connection that has to survive a login or a long transfer needs the same exit address throughout. Sticky-session length is the number to compare.
- Country coverage
- SOCKS5 is usually bought to appear somewhere specific. A deep pool in the wrong country is of no use at all.
- What the traffic costs
- SOCKS5 is almost never priced separately — you are buying the same pool through a different port, so the provider's ordinary rate is the rate.
Free SOCKS5 proxies, live right now
These are from our own list, checked around the clock. They are free, which also means they are shared, short-lived and wrong for anything that holds a login — but they are the cheapest way to see whether a proxy fixes your problem at all before you pay for one.
| Ip Address:Port | Type | Country | Anonymity | Speed | Uptime | Response | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SOCKS5 |
Israel
|
Elite | 1.39% |
20%
|
158.88 ms | 36s ago | |
| SOCKS5 |
Sweden
|
Elite | 2.38% |
20%
|
94.66 ms | 36s ago | |
| SOCKS5 |
South Korea
|
Elite | 0.36% |
20%
|
512.4 ms | 36s ago | |
| SOCKS5 |
Israel
|
Elite | 1.05% |
20%
|
174.54 ms | 36s ago | |
| SOCKS5 |
Israel
|
Elite | 1.54% |
20%
|
193.58 ms | 36s ago | |
| SOCKS5 |
Sweden
|
Elite | 2.24% |
20%
|
100.57 ms | 36s ago | |
| SOCKS5 |
Russia
|
Elite | 0.13% |
50%
|
1662.69 ms | 36s ago | |
| SOCKS5 |
United States
|
Elite | 0.28% |
20%
|
1161.01 ms | 36s ago | |
| SOCKS5 |
Israel
|
Elite | 0.96% |
20%
|
196.19 ms | 36s ago | |
| SOCKS5 |
United States
|
Elite | 0.06% |
30%
|
3435.46 ms | 42s ago |
Every provider, in order
1. GonzoProxy — Widest protocol support
4.5 / 5 for this job · from $2 / GB
GonzoProxy has the broadest protocol list in this table — SOCKS4, SOCKS5, HTTP and HTTPS — which makes it the easiest answer when you do not yet know what the client at your end will insist on. Legacy tooling that only speaks SOCKS4 is rare but it exists, and this is the one entry here that covers it.
The rest of the package suits SOCKS5 work well. Every plan carries unlimited concurrent connections, so a tool opening many simultaneous TCP streams is not metered on them, and sticky sessions are claimed up to 72 hours — the longest here apart from AnyIP — which matters for long transfers that must not change address mid-way. Traffic is bought by the gigabyte, never expires and rolls into the next plan, and targeting goes down to country, city, state, ZIP and ASN.
Mobile covers Poland and Ukraine only as of writing, the dashboard has no detailed per-request logs, and there is no desktop app or browser extension — everything is in the web interface.
Key features
- SOCKS4, SOCKS5, HTTP and HTTPS
- Unlimited concurrent connections on every plan
- Sticky sessions claimed up to 72 hours
- Traffic never expires and rolls over
- Country, city, state, ZIP and ASN targeting
Best suited for: mixed tooling where you cannot be sure which proxy protocol a client will accept.
2. Proxy-Seller — Cheapest SOCKS5 traffic
4.5 / 5 for this job · from $0.30 / GB
If SOCKS5 is simply the port your client needs and the rest is ordinary proxy work, Proxy-Seller is the value pick. It states HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5 across a residential network it puts at 47M+ rotating addresses in 220+ locations, at a $0.30/GB entry rate — the cheapest published figure in this table, over the longest location list.
Two extras are relevant to SOCKS5 specifically. Authentication covers both username and password and IP whitelisting, which gives you a way out of the Chrome credential problem without a relay. And the 1.2M+ IPv6 pool is cheap traffic for any target that accepts it, which is unusual to find at all at this price.
It also carries the paperwork: ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and ISO 9001:2015, GDPR, CCPA and ePrivacy compliance, with DPA and SCC readiness. The weak spot is mobile — 20+ countries against 220+ residential locations.
Key features
- HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5
- $0.30/GB, the lowest published rate here
- 47M+ IPs across 220+ locations, as declared
- Username/password and IP whitelisting
- 1,200,000+ IPv6 addresses
Best suited for: ordinary SOCKS5 work at the lowest per-gigabyte rate, with whitelisting as an alternative to passwords.
3. NodeMaven — Best for UDP
4.3 / 5 for this job · from $2.20 / GB
UDP is the reason to read this entry. NodeMaven is the only provider here whose published material, as recorded in our review, markets UDP — specifically on its ISP proxies. If you need DNS resolved through the proxy, QUIC or HTTP/3, voice or game traffic, that puts it at the front of a very short queue, because most of the field sells TCP-only SOCKS5 without saying so.
The supporting features fit: HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5, sticky sessions quoted up to 24 hours with unlimited concurrent sessions, residential, mobile and ISP under one dashboard, and ISP plans carrying unlimited traffic with a 99.9% uptime guarantee. For UDP work specifically, those unlimited-traffic ISP plans are the sensible place to be.
At $2.20/GB the rotating traffic is expensive next to the top of this table, so high-volume work belongs on the ISP side. There is no free trial — the $3.50, 750 MB entry is a paid demo — and a third-party write-up says the free-trial route is restricted to registered companies that pass KYC. Smaller locations are reported to be uneven in depth.
Key features
- UDP marketed on ISP proxies
- HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5
- Sticky sessions up to 24 hours, unlimited concurrency
- ISP plans with unlimited traffic and a 99.9% uptime guarantee
- 99.99% uptime, as stated
Best suited for: anything that needs real UDP over SOCKS5 — DNS through the proxy, QUIC, voice or game traffic.
4. Decodo (ex Smartproxy) — Best targeting over SOCKS5
4.3 / 5 for this job · from $0.08 / GB
Smartproxy states SOCKS5 support explicitly and attaches it to the most precise targeting in this table: country, city, ZIP code and ASN, over a pool the provider puts at 115M+ ethically-sourced addresses in 195+ locations. When SOCKS5 is being used to appear somewhere exact rather than merely elsewhere, that combination is the one to want.
Sessions are held up to 30 minutes on sticky mode, uptime is stated at 99.99%, and the $0.08/GB entry figure is among the lowest here. The provider's note that older SOCKS5-only clients are supported is worth reading literally: this is a network that expects non-browser traffic rather than tolerating it.
Check the trial terms first. The 3-day free trial and the 14-day money-back option are mutually exclusive, refunds are first-purchase only and capped at under 20% of a residential plan's traffic, and the $4/GB pay-as-you-go option is wallet-only and cannot be combined with a subscription.
Key features
- HTTP(S) and SOCKS5, with older SOCKS5-only clients supported
- 115M+ IPs across 195+ locations, per the provider
- City, ZIP code and ASN targeting
- Sticky sessions up to 30 minutes
- 99.99% uptime, as stated
Best suited for: SOCKS5 traffic that has to come out of a specific city or network, not just a specific country.
5. ProxyEmpire — Best rollover on SOCKS5 traffic
4.2 / 5 for this job · from $0.35 / GB
ProxyEmpire lists four protocols — HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS5 and HTTP/2 — and pairs them with the most forgiving billing here: on GB-based plans unused traffic rolls over and never expires, with no contracts and no monthly minimums. SOCKS5 work is often bursty by nature, a transfer here and a session there rather than a steady crawl, and that is exactly the pattern expiring gigabytes punish.
The network is smaller than the leaders at 30M+ residential addresses across 170+ countries, but the targeting is not: country, region, city, ISP, ASN, OS/TCP fingerprint and ZIP. There is a public API with an endpoint generator, and mobile coverage is stated at 170+ countries.
The trial is narrower than the headline: $1.97 excludes static ISP and datacenter, and unlimited residential comes only on request. Unlimited bandwidth is sold by the day or week from $200/day with no rollover, so the billing feature that makes the GB plans attractive does not carry over to it.
Key features
- HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS5 and HTTP/2
- Rollover bandwidth — unused GB never expire
- 30M+ IPs across 170+ countries
- ZIP, ASN and OS/TCP targeting
- Public API with an endpoint generator
Best suited for: occasional SOCKS5 use where traffic is bought in advance and should not evaporate at month end.
6. Floppydata — Most SOCKS5 product types
4.0 / 5 for this job · from $0.63 / GB
Floppydata states SOCKS5 across the widest product range here: rotating, static residential, static datacenter, mobile and ISP, all on one account. For SOCKS5 that is more useful than it sounds, because the protocol tends to be used for jobs with different shapes — one fixed address for a mail client, rotating traffic for a crawler, a mobile address for an app test — and here they do not need three vendors.
Pricing is published rather than negotiated: rotating traffic from $1.00/GB covering residential, mobile and datacenter together, static datacenter addresses from $0.79 per IP per month in bundles of 20, 50 or 100, and open discount tiers at 20% off 96 GB and 30% off 120 GB.
Support is the weak point. No phone line, so no live voice escalation; documentation is thin for advanced setups such as custom rotation logic; and the 100 MB per-type trial is a connectivity check rather than a load test — enough to confirm SOCKS5 connects, not enough to judge the pool.
Key features
- SOCKS5, HTTP and HTTPS
- Rotating, static residential, static datacenter, mobile and ISP on one account
- Static datacenter IPs from $0.79/IP/month
- Published tiers: 20% off at 96 GB, 30% at 120 GB
Best suited for: several different SOCKS5 jobs at once — a fixed address, rotating traffic and a mobile exit — on one bill.
7. Nsocks — Built around SOCKS5
3.9 / 5 for this job
The name is not an accident: Nsocks sells SOCKS5, HTTP and HTTPS across five separately billed product lines — rotating, static, datacenter, ISP and unlimited — over a residential pool it claims at 80M+ real-user addresses, with stated uptime of 99.95%. Third parties report country, city, ISP and ASN targeting. If you want SOCKS5 for two different jobs on separate budgets, that product separation does real work.
The payment list is the broadest here — crypto, Alipay, WeChat Pay and UPI — which matters if cards are awkward where you are.
Verification is the problem, and it is why this sits mid-table rather than higher. There is no free trial, so there is no way to test SOCKS5 pool quality before paying; the provider states it does not support refunds on products sold; and its own home page quotes two different pool sizes, 80M+ in one place and 90M+ in another. It also publishes no pricing table, which is why the price column above is empty for it.
Key features
- SOCKS5, HTTP and HTTPS
- 80M+ residential IPs claimed
- Five product lines billed separately
- 99.95% uptime, as stated
- Crypto, Alipay, WeChat Pay and UPI
Best suited for: SOCKS5 across several budgets at once, for buyers who can commit without a trial.
8. ProxySale.com — Best country spread over SOCKS5
3.9 / 5 for this job · from $0.06 / GB
Proxy-Sale states HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5 on its residential product, and the residential product is the broadest thing it has: 86M+ addresses across 200+ countries by the provider's own count, with country, state and city targeting. For SOCKS5 bought to appear in an unusual country, that 200+ figure is the second-longest list here.
Static IP products sit on the same account for the jobs that need a fixed exit, and a Scraper API is available on top. Usage-based billing keeps a light SOCKS5 workload cheap.
Treat the performance figures as claims: uptime, success rate and response times are all provider-declared with no third-party audit shown. Two restrictions matter before buying — the service is not available in mainland China by the provider's own policy, and the free trial covers the Web Scraper API only, not the proxy network, so there is no free way to assess the SOCKS5 pool.
Key features
- HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5 on residential
- 86M+ IPs across 200+ countries, as counted by the provider
- Country, state and city targeting
- Static IP products on the same account
Best suited for: SOCKS5 in countries the bigger networks cover thinly, where breadth beats audited figures.
9. FlyProxy — Best measured SOCKS5 performance
3.8 / 5 for this job · from $0.90 / GB
FlyProxy lists HTTP and SOCKS5 and brings the only outside measurements in this table: a third-party listing recorded success rates from 96.8% in Mexico to 98.7% in Germany, with response times between 0.52s and 1.00s. For SOCKS5 sessions that have to complete rather than merely start, somebody else's numbers are worth more than another self-reported percentage.
Unlimited concurrent sessions are confirmed by both the provider and that third-party review, which is the figure that decides throughput when many TCP streams are open at once. Coverage is 195+ countries and regions with state and city targeting, at $0.90/GB.
Three things to weigh. The pool is described as 100M+ by the provider and 69M by the third party, so take the larger number cautiously. There are no mobile proxies at all. And the provider states no refunds once products are sold, while its trial position is unclear — the third-party listing says there is none, the provider advertises a free 500M traffic offer through sales.
Key features
- HTTP and SOCKS5
- Third-party tested: 96.8-98.7% success, 0.52-1.00s response
- Unlimited concurrent sessions, confirmed by both sources
- 195+ countries with state and city targeting
Best suited for: SOCKS5 work where throughput and completion rates matter and mobile exits are not needed.
10. MobileProxy.Space — Best mobile SOCKS5 by the day
3.7 / 5 for this job · from ₽490 / day
MobileProxy.Space states SOCKS5 and HTTP on mobile and dedicated datacenter proxies, and its billing is the reason to consider it: mobile plans are rented by period with unlimited traffic, from a one-day minimum. For a SOCKS5 job that moves a lot of data for a short time — app testing, a short campaign, anything against a target that only tolerates carrier addresses — paying for time rather than traffic is substantially cheaper.
The dashboard is better equipped than most: a proxy checker, port checks, a speed test and a browser proxy manager extension, which is a genuine convenience given how awkward SOCKS5 credentials are in Chromium. Crypto and local payment methods are accepted.
It is not a general-purpose SOCKS5 network — there is no large rotating residential pool behind it. Third-party write-ups flag the prices as relatively high, some customers have reported problems with geographical locations, and there are reports of laggy proxies and occasional late-night maintenance windows.
Key features
- SOCKS5 and HTTP on mobile and datacenter
- One-day minimum rental
- Unlimited traffic for the rental period
- Dashboard with proxy checker, port check and speed test
Best suited for: short, data-heavy SOCKS5 runs that need a carrier address and would be expensive per gigabyte.
11. AnyIP.io — Longest SOCKS5 sessions
3.6 / 5 for this job · from $2 / GB
AnyIP states HTTPS and SOCKS5, and its distinguishing number is session length: sticky sessions up to 7 days, longer than anything else in this table. For a SOCKS5 connection that is supposed to look like the same machine for a week — a mail client, a persistent login, an app under test — that is the specification that matters, and nobody else here offers it.
Billing is unusually simple: residential and mobile come on one plan at one price with only bandwidth metered, and rotation and concurrent requests are unlimited and not charged for. Filtering covers country, ISP, region and precise GPS coordinates, which is rare and useful for location-sensitive work.
Coverage is the catch and it is why this sits last: 38+ countries is a short list next to the 195+ claimed elsewhere, so anything global will find gaps. The pricing needs reading twice — the advertised $2/GB is the Enterprise rate, while extra traffic is $5/GB on Micro and $4/GB on Basic. Crypto payments fall outside the refund policy; the 14-day guarantee covers card purchases only.
Key features
- HTTPS and SOCKS5
- Sticky sessions up to 7 days, the longest here
- Residential and mobile on one plan, bandwidth-only metering
- Unlimited rotation and concurrent requests
- Filtering by country, ISP, region and GPS coordinates
Best suited for: long-lived SOCKS5 sessions in a handful of covered countries, where a week of the same address is the requirement.
October’s pick
GonzoProxy
GonzoProxy sells residential and mobile proxies by the gigabyte, with traffic that never expires, unlimited concurrent connections and targeting down to ZIP code and ASN. The mobile side is the weak spot: Poland and Ukraine only as of writing.
See the current offerSOCKS5 proxies: questions we get
Does a SOCKS5 proxy encrypt my traffic?
No. SOCKS5 relays bytes without encrypting them. Whatever protection you have comes from TLS inside the connection, so HTTPS still matters exactly as much as it would without a proxy. If you need the hop itself encrypted, you want a VPN or an SSH tunnel.
Is SOCKS5 faster than an HTTP proxy?
Marginally, because there is less parsing, but not in a way you will notice. Throughput is decided by the distance to the exit address and how loaded it is.
What can SOCKS5 do that an HTTP proxy cannot?
Carry anything that speaks TCP rather than just web traffic — mail clients, SSH, database tools, game clients, torrent clients — and, where the provider implements it, UDP.
Do all SOCKS5 proxies support UDP?
No. The protocol defines a UDP associate command but each provider decides whether to implement it, and many sell TCP-only SOCKS5. If you need DNS through the proxy, QUIC, voice or game traffic, confirm it before buying.
Why does curl need socks5h instead of socks5?
With socks5 your machine resolves the hostname and sends only the address to the proxy, so your own resolver still sees every site you visit. socks5h hands the hostname to the proxy and lets it resolve, which is almost always what you wanted.
Can I use a SOCKS5 proxy in Chrome?
You can point Chrome at one with a command-line flag, but it has no per-profile prompt for SOCKS5 credentials. In practice that means IP whitelisting, an extension, or a small local relay that holds the password for you. Firefox handles it natively and has a remote-DNS checkbox.
Are free SOCKS5 proxies safe to use?
Treat them as public infrastructure run by people you cannot name. They are fine for checking whether something works or whether a site differs by country. Nothing with a password, a payment or a personal account should go through one, especially since SOCKS5 adds no encryption of its own.
Is SOCKS5 good for torrenting?
It is the usual choice because many clients support it natively and it can carry the peer traffic, not just the tracker calls. Two caveats: your provider's terms may prohibit it — at least one network in our reviews blocks it outright — and a SOCKS5 proxy does not hide the traffic from whoever runs the proxy.
Why are some well-known providers missing from this ranking?
Because their own published material, as recorded in our reviews, does not state SOCKS5 support. Several of them very likely offer it. We would rather leave a gap than put a protocol claim in a provider's mouth, and we add them as soon as their documentation says so.
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