What Can Go Wrong with Proxies?
Lets be honest, it is not uncommon to have issues with a proxy. From low quality IP addresses, inaccurate geolocation and unstable connections, there are a plethora of reasons that it could not be performing as advertised.
Low quality can cause issues from the get-go. Many low-cost proxies rely on overused datacenter IPs that are already flagged by major websites. In the best-case scenario, you might be forced to solve a CAPTCHA, experience increased request throttling, or need to rotate proxies more frequently. In the worst case, you may even get blocked immediately by major sites such as Google and Amazon. For businesses that rely on proxies for web automation, using flagged IPs can result in wasted resources and operational setbacks. Sufficient testing is crucial to help avoid these issues.
Unstable performance can be caused by high latency, throttled bandwidth and inconsistent uptime. High latency can slow down data collection, making real-time applications unreliable. Throttled bandwidth can cause slow page loads, failed downloads, or incomplete responses. Frequent downtime disrupts critical tasks, forcing users to manually intervene or restart operations. This is frustrating to diagnose and can waste time and money when having to resend requests. Even if an IP initially works, unreliable providers might fail to maintain uptime, causing frequent outages. In the worst-case scenario the proxy you have been provided may be entirely broken and unusable.
Inaccurate geolocation will show the request in a completely different location to what is expected being an immediate red flag for any bot detectors, once again requiring the need for resending requests. Streaming services may block access if they detect inconsistencies between your chosen location and the actual IP routing. E-commerce or social media accounts might trigger security alerts, causing accounts to be flagged or suspended. Since geolocation is commonly the primary reason for using a proxy, it is imperative that it works as advertised, Nobody wants to pay for a proxy in London when in reality it routes through Russia! Not only is this not correct, it can also have a negative impact on performance and latency to your target.
Current Solutions, and Their Issues
The most old-school method of proxy testing is manually using cURL. While this is reliable and can indicate if a proxy is online, it is time consuming and impractical for any large-scale testing. Alternatively, a service such as “What is my IP” could be used to verify a proxy and retrieve an insight into additional details such as geo-location or the ASN but unfortunately will not provide any comprehensive insight into the performance of the proxy and once again, is not practical at all for more than a few proxies.
Online Tools
Online tools exist to check for website bans, IP leaks and basic latency testing such as Infatica’s proxy checker. While these tools are useful for a quick assessment of a proxy, most have limitations.
Firstly, they generally only support a single test location so are not good for verifying a proxy’s performance across different regions. The reason that this is so important is that if a proxy is based in Europe but the proxy checkers’ testing server is based in Asia then the latency result will be negatively biased by the long round-trip time created by packets having to travel from the test server to the proxy. This is not an issue with proxy, just an inherent issue of distance.
The information that is provided for each test result is often very limited and will generally only indicate the status of the request rather than giving a full picture of the IP address information, the request status code and the latency.
Proxy testers are often used to gather diagnostic and error information for clients so they can escalate issues to their proxy providers. For this use-case, all testers also have one huge issue, they offer an easy way to share verifiable results.
Downloadable Tools
Downloadable software such as the FOGLDN proxy tester exist for Windows and MacOS and can be used for very rudimentary proxy testing but even this has limitations. The setup is clunky, the UI is outdated and most importantly it lacks fingerprinting, closer to those actually found in common applications and use-cases. The reporting functionality is also very limited, only reporting a boolean, successful or failed rather than status codes which can be incredibly helpful for diagnostics.
Ping Proxies Proxy Tester
The Ping Proxies proxy tester is a free to use, no account required, online proxy tester. It will thoroughly test large quantities of proxies from a variety of test locations against a target of your choosing. Each proxy will simultaneously be verified in North America, Europe, Asia and Oceania to provide a thorough indication of the real-world performance that you can expect.
- Instant real-time results
- Global proxy tester network
- Verifiable and trust-worthy results
- No signup required
- Completely free
By using a large global network proxy testing nodes we are able to give realistic performance results for any region in the world. We also allow easy, secure sharing of proxy test results via a shareable link and configurable password. This can be useful when troubleshooting and will allow you to provide verifiable results.
How We Built It & Why it is Better
The Ping Proxies proxy tester is built from the ground up with reliability, security and speed in mind. Our API seamlessly and concurrently communicates with proxy test servers across the globe, gathering the results to be viewed in our easy-to-use user interface in a matter of seconds.
Security is at the heart of the tester, proxy passwords are only used for each test and never saved, giving you peace of mind that your proxies can be tested privately and securely. Even the test results are deemed sensitive information by us, therefore any shared results are always required to be authenticated by a password before being viewed by external sources.
All proxies are tested simultaneously by our proxy tester nodes. These nodes have realistic fingerprinting with headers and user agents that emulate real-world browser conditions. This way, the test confirms exactly what you can expect in reality, without skewed and unrealistic results. Being able to test against a wide range of test servers means that no matter where your proxy is located, you will easily be able to measure its performance without being affected by the location of the test server.
Conclusion
From unreliable IPs to inaccurate geolocation, proxy issues can be frustrating and costly for users relying on them for web automation and data gathering. While existing tools provide basic testing capabilities, they often fail to account for real-world conditions. The Ping Proxies proxy tester solves this problem by offering a global testing network that delivers accurate and verifiable results. With its secure and user-friendly approach, it sets a new standard for proxy testing, ensuring that users get the performance they expect without unexpected surprises.
To get started visit https://pingproxies.com/proxy-tester. Effortlessly test all of your proxies and share the results securely from one place. Zero setup is required, instantly test proxies directly from your browser and stay on top of your pesky proxies. This is just the beginning of the comprehensive Ping Proxies testing toolkit. Stay tuned to see what else we have in store. Feel free to give us feedback through our support channels and share with anyone you know who is looking for a free, comprehensive and secure solution to testing their proxies.
Available now on the pingproxies.com website with the Public API version being available later on in 2025.
