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What Are Proxy Anonymity Levels?

Proxy anonymity levels grade a proxy by what it reveals in the HTTP headers it forwards. A transparent proxy passes on your real IP, an anonymous proxy hides your IP but says a proxy is in use, and an elite (high-anonymity) proxy sends neither.

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how it works

How anonymity levels work

The levels come from headers a forwarding proxy can add to plain HTTP requests. X-Forwarded-For carries the client's original IP; Via, defined in RFC 9110, names the proxies a request passed through; Forwarded (RFC 7239) is the standardised version of both. Caching and corporate proxies add these on purpose, so the website or the next hop knows who the real client was.

  • 1

    Transparent

    Your IP in headers
    Yes, in X-Forwarded-For or Forwarded
    Proxy announced
    Yes
    Typical source
    Caching and corporate filtering proxies
  • 2

    Anonymous

    Your IP in headers
    No
    Proxy announced
    Yes, through Via or similar headers
    Typical source
    Some open and older proxy software
  • 3

    Elite

    Your IP in headers
    No
    Proxy announced
    No
    Typical source
    Most commercial proxy services
why it matters

Why anonymity levels matter for proxy users

The grading matters less than it used to. It only applies to plain http:// requests: on https:// sites the proxy relays a CONNECT tunnel and cannot add headers inside the encryption. And websites now judge visitors by much more than headers: the IP's ASN and reputation, the TLS and browser fingerprint, and request patterns.

A proxy that leaks your IP in a header is still worth catching. Request a page that echoes headers over plain HTTP, once directly and once through the proxy, and compare.

Any X-Forwarded-For, Forwarded or Via header that appears only in the second response was added by the proxy. Pair the check with a WebRTC leak test, since a browser can expose your IP outside the proxy entirely.

CleanProxies static ISP proxies give you dedicated IPs on US carrier ASNs, so you can run this check on your own IPs before you scale up.

Compare forwarded headersShell
# Run once without and once with the proxy, then compare the headers
curl -s http://httpbin.org/headers
curl -s -x http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT http://httpbin.org/headers

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Related terms

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Proxy anonymity levels FAQs

Straight answers about Proxy anonymity levels.

An elite or high-anonymity proxy forwards requests without adding headers that reveal your IP or that a proxy is in use, so the website sees an ordinary request from the proxy's IP.

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