# Databay's Free Proxy List: Strict SSL Checks and a 5-Minute Refresh Cycle

> Databay-labs/free-proxy-list publishes HTTP, SOCKS4, and SOCKS5 proxies with a strict SSL guarantee, refreshed every five minutes. The list is easy to consume, but free proxies remain a security trade-off.

**databay-labs/free-proxy-list** — Free Proxy List ✅​🚀 HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS4 & SOCKS5 | Updated every 5 minutes | Strict SSL, zero MITM, multi-country

- Repository: https://github.com/databay-labs/free-proxy-list
- Website: https://databay.com/free-proxy-list
- Stars: 39 · Forks: 0
- Language: Unknown
- License: MIT
- Published: 2026-08-21 · Updated: 2026-08-21 · Language: en
- Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/databay-labs-free-proxy-list

## What This List Solves and Who It Serves

This repository solves a practical problem: finding free proxies that actually work for HTTPS traffic without breaking certificate trust. Many free proxy lists contain dead entries or proxies that intercept SSL connections, a technique known as MITM. The Databay project claims every proxy in http.txt has been verified to tunnel HTTPS via the CONNECT method while preserving the target site's certificate. That distinction matters for developers who need a quick pool of IPs for testing, scraping, or bypassing regional restrictions in non-critical applications. The intended audience is engineers and hobbyists who want a simple, command-line-friendly source of proxy addresses without signing up for an API key or paying for a service.

## The Strict SSL Guarantee and Why It Matters

The README emphasizes a unique guarantee: all proxies in the HTTP list have valid SSL certificates, meaning no MITM certificate trust is needed. This is a response to a real problem. Many free proxies are operated by malicious actors who insert their own certificates to read or modify traffic. The project's verification process checks that the proxy correctly tunnels HTTPS and keeps the original certificate intact. The README also notes there is no separate https.txt file; modern HTTP proxies handle HTTPS through the CONNECT method, so the http.txt list doubles as the HTTPS list. This is a sensible design choice, but it also means the guarantee only applies to the HTTP list. SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 proxies are not subject to the same SSL validation because they operate at a lower level, and the README does not make the same claim for them.

## Data Access: Direct Files, Country Folders, and a Public API

You can get the data three ways. First, direct downloads from the databay.com origin, which the README says is always-on and CORS-open. The URLs are simple: curl -s https://databay.com/free-proxy-list.txt for the full list, or per-protocol files like http.txt and socks5.txt. Second, country-specific files live in the by-country/ directory, using ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes. For example, curl -O https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/databay-labs/free-proxy-list/by-country/us/socks5.txt fetches US SOCKS5 proxies. Third, the public API at https://databay.com/api/v1/proxy-list offers filtering by protocol, country, anonymity level (elite, anonymous, transparent), SSL strictness, Google compatibility, speed, and format (json, csv, txt). The API requires no key and returns up to 1000 proxies per page. This variety makes the list easy to integrate into scripts or CI pipelines, and the jsDelivr CDN mirrors reduce bandwidth load on the origin.

## Running It: Commands and Configuration Keys

There is no installation step because this is a data repository, not a software package. You consume it with curl. The README gives direct examples: curl -O https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/databay-labs/free-proxy-list/http.txt. Each file is plain text with one IP:PORT per line. For the API, you can add query parameters. The README documents protocol, country, anonymity, ssl, google, speed, format, and limit. For instance, to get elite HTTP proxies from Germany in CSV format, you would request https://databay.com/api/v1/proxy-list?protocol=http&country=DE&anonymity=elite&format=csv. The limit parameter accepts values from 1 to 1000, with a default of 500. The response schema is not fully shown in the README, but it presumably returns a list of proxy objects with fields like IP, port, protocol, country, and latency. The code examples for Python, Node.js, Go, PHP, Java, and C# are linked in the README but not included in the repository, so you would need to visit the databay.com site for those.

## The Refresh Cycle and Deduplication Mechanism

The list is refreshed every five minutes, according to the README. Each commit is deduplicated and sorted by recency. This is a significant operational detail. It means the repository is actively maintained, and stale proxies are likely removed quickly. The README also reports current counts: 1695 HTTP proxies, 393 SOCKS4, and 280 SOCKS5, with an average latency of 2602ms and a best of 40ms. These numbers are snapshots, not guarantees. The five-minute refresh is a promise from the maintainers, but the actual uptime of any individual proxy is unknown. You should treat these counts and latency figures as indicative, not as a service-level agreement. The deduplication ensures you do not get the same IP:PORT twice, which is useful for scripts that iterate over the list.

## Where It Falls Short: Risks and Limitations

The most obvious limitation is the inherent risk of free proxies. The README itself warns: 'Free proxies carry risks! Many perform MITM attacks to modify your data.' Even with strict SSL validation, a proxy can still see the metadata of your traffic, including the destination host and timing. It can also throttle or drop connections. The list is not suitable for any application requiring confidentiality or reliability. Another limitation is the lack of an https.txt file, which might confuse users expecting a separate HTTPS list. The README explains that HTTP proxies tunnel HTTPS via CONNECT, but this means the http.txt list is the only one with the strict SSL guarantee. SOCKS proxies are not validated for SSL, so using them for HTTPS traffic requires trusting the proxy operator. Finally, the API response schema is not fully documented in the README, so you may need to experiment with the actual response to parse it correctly.

## A Real Alternative: Commercial Proxy Services

The README itself points to Databay's premium residential proxies as an alternative. The difference is fundamental. Free lists like this one are a shared, public pool of IPs that are often slow, unreliable, and potentially hostile. Commercial services provide dedicated or rotating residential IPs with authentication, uptime guarantees, and customer support. They also offer features like session control and targeting by city or ASN. The cost is real money, but you get consistency and security. For example, a commercial service might guarantee a 99% uptime and provide a dashboard for monitoring usage. The free list has no such guarantees. If your project needs proxies for production scraping or data collection at scale, the free list will likely fail you. The free list is best for prototyping or low-volume tasks where a few failures are acceptable.

## Maintenance and License Implications

The repository is licensed under MIT, which means you can use, copy, and modify the list freely, even for commercial purposes, as long as you include the original copyright notice. There is no restriction on redistribution. The maintenance cost is low for consumers because the data is hosted externally. The README states the origin is always-on and CORS-open, so you can rely on the URLs without managing your own mirror. However, you should consider the cost of integrating the list into your own systems. The five-minute refresh means you might want to cache the data to avoid hitting the origin too frequently. The API has a limit of 1000 proxies per page, so you may need to paginate to get the full list. The project has no recent releases, which is not unusual for a data repository, but it means there is no versioning. You cannot pin to a specific snapshot; you always get the latest. This is fine for a list that changes constantly, but it also means the data can change underneath you.

## Conclusion

Adopt this list if you need a quick, unauthenticated source of proxy IPs for low-stakes tasks like testing geolocation or scraping public data, and you value the strict SSL claim. Do not use it for sensitive traffic or production workloads, because free proxies are inherently unreliable and the README itself warns of MITM risks. Before relying on it, verify a sample of proxies yourself by checking certificate validity and latency, and confirm the list's freshness by comparing timestamps across a few hours. If you need guaranteed uptime, performance, or anonymity, pay for a commercial proxy service instead.

## FAQ

### Is using a proxy list legal?

The repository takes no legal position and offers no guidance. What it documents is its own verification and freshness policy: candidates come from public feeds and are checked before publication, an entry qualifies for up to six hours after a successful certificate-validating HTTPS request, and the measurements do not establish operator trust. Whether a given use is lawful is a separate question the page does not address.

### How does a free proxy work?

In the terms this page uses, an entry in the HTTP list is an endpoint and port that reaches an HTTPS destination using the CONNECT method, which is why the same file serves both kinds of traffic. Endpoints qualify by completing an HTTPS request with destination certificate validation, and anything that would require relaxed validation is dropped. SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 endpoints are published as their own files with the same qualification rule.

### What is a proxy list used for, in this repository?

Here it is a set of endpoints you can fetch without an account or a key, as plain one-per-line text files, filterable by country through a directory or through a query API. The API also accepts filters for anonymity, speed and suitability for a particular search engine, and can return JSON, CSV or text.

### is free proxy list safe

The page does not claim safety and states four things its measurements do not establish: future availability, speed from your location, operator trust, and access to other sites. What it does guarantee is narrow and checkable, namely that an entry completed an HTTPS request with destination certificate validation within the last six hours.

### how to use free proxy list

Download the file with a transfer tool, then configure your client separately, because fetching the list does not route anything on its own. For SOCKS5 the documented form asks the proxy to resolve the destination hostname. Keep certificate verification enabled on your own connection too, and on Windows PowerShell call the real executable by name rather than the alias.

## Sources

- [Official documentation](https://databay.com/free-proxy-list)
- [Official README](https://github.com/databay-labs/free-proxy-list#readme)
- [Project repository](https://github.com/databay-labs/free-proxy-list)

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Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/databay-labs-free-proxy-list