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How to Use a Proxy in Python requests

Every way to route requests through a proxy — HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS5, environment variables, sessions and rotation — with proxies pulled from a free, hourly-verified list.

Basic HTTP / HTTPS proxy

The simplest form — one proxy handles both http and https targets, no extra packages required.

import requests

proxy = "http://1.2.3.4:8080"   # a line from the HTTP list
r = requests.get(
    "https://httpbin.org/ip",
    proxies={"http": proxy, "https": proxy},
    timeout=10,
)
print(r.json())

SOCKS5 proxy

Install SOCKS support once, then use the socks5h:// scheme so DNS resolves through the proxy.

pip install "requests[socks]"

proxy = "socks5h://1.2.3.4:1080"   # a line from the SOCKS5 list
r = requests.get("https://httpbin.org/ip",
                 proxies={"http": proxy, "https": proxy}, timeout=10)

Proxy for a whole session

s = requests.Session()
s.proxies = {"http": "http://1.2.3.4:8080", "https": "http://1.2.3.4:8080"}
s.get("https://example.com")   # every request in this session uses the proxy

Environment variables

requests also honours the standard proxy environment variables, so you can set a proxy without touching code:

export HTTP_PROXY="http://1.2.3.4:8080"
export HTTPS_PROXY="http://1.2.3.4:8080"
python your_script.py

Auto-pick a working proxy from the list

import requests

txt = requests.get(
    "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xyzs996/free-proxy-health-list/main/proxies/protocols/http/data.txt",
    timeout=15).text
for line in txt.splitlines():
    proxy = f"http://{line.strip()}"
    try:
        r = requests.get("https://httpbin.org/ip",
                         proxies={"http": proxy, "https": proxy}, timeout=6)
        if r.ok:
            print("using", proxy, r.json()); break
    except requests.RequestException:
        continue

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