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Free SOCKS4 Proxy List
A verified, health-checked list of free SOCKS4 proxies — the lightweight, widely-compatible legacy SOCKS protocol. Download as TXT, JSON or CSV, refreshed hourly, no signup.
Working SOCKS4 proxies right now: —
Each TXT line is a plain host:port. The JSON file adds latency, quality score and the last-checked timestamp.
How to use a SOCKS4 proxy
SOCKS4 forwards TCP connections at a low level, so it works with more than just web traffic. It is the leanest SOCKS variant and is supported by most older tools and libraries.
curl
curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xyzs996/free-proxy-health-list/main/proxies/protocols/socks4/data.txt -o socks4.txt proxy="$(head -n 1 socks4.txt)" curl --socks4 "$proxy" -I "http://example.com/" --max-time 10
Python (requests)
pip install "requests[socks]"
import requests
proxy = "socks4://1.2.3.4:1080" # replace with a line from the list
r = requests.get(
"https://httpbin.org/ip",
proxies={"http": proxy, "https": proxy},
timeout=10,
)
print(r.json())
Note that SOCKS4 resolves DNS on the client side. If you need the proxy to resolve hostnames (remote DNS), use a SOCKS5 proxy with the socks5h:// scheme instead.
SOCKS4 vs SOCKS5 — which should you use?
| Capability | SOCKS4 | SOCKS5 |
|---|---|---|
| TCP forwarding | Yes | Yes |
| UDP support | No | Yes |
| Authentication | No | Yes |
| Remote DNS | No | Yes |
| Overhead | Lower | Slightly higher |
Reach for SOCKS4 when you want a minimal, broadly compatible proxy and don't need UDP or remote DNS. Otherwise SOCKS5 is the more capable choice, and plain HTTP proxies are simplest for web-only requests.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between SOCKS4 and SOCKS5?
SOCKS4 is older and lighter — TCP only, no UDP, no authentication, no remote DNS. SOCKS5 adds all of those. Use SOCKS4 as a lightweight fallback and SOCKS5 when you need the extra features.
How often is the list updated?
Re-checked and republished hourly. Each JSON record carries lastChecked and latencyMs so you can drop stale or slow entries.
Are free SOCKS4 proxies safe?
They are shared, run by unknown operators, and SOCKS4 has no authentication — never route logins or sensitive data through them. Use them for testing, scraping public data and automation.
Why do proxies fail so often?
Free proxies are volatile by design. The list is health-checked hourly and sorted fastest-first — always loop to the next entry on failure.
Need fresher checks, filtering and rotation?
The public list has no SLA. The planned Pro API adds fresher checks, filtering and a rotation endpoint.