How to use a proxy with cURL

• An active CleanProxies plan: static ISP proxies for fixed US IPs, or rotating residential / mobile proxies for pools. The trial works too.
• Your credential line from the dashboard's proxy manager: host (or IP), port, username and password.
• cURL itself. It ships with macOS, Windows 10 and later, and almost every Linux distribution; run curl --version to check.
• A terminal. On Windows, call curl.exe in PowerShell, because curl there can be an alias for Invoke-WebRequest.

New to proxies? For the overview, read Using proxies with cURL, Python and Node.js and SOCKS5 vs HTTP proxies. This guide goes deeper on cURL only.

Most tools want the same details as a URL: http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT for HTTP(S) or socks5://USERNAME:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT for SOCKS5. The examples on this page use those placeholders; copy the host, port, username and password from your CleanProxies dashboard. To convert a whole list at once, paste it into the proxy list formatter.

1. 1

   Copy one proxy line

   Open the proxy manager in your CleanProxies dashboard and copy a line. ISP lines look like IP:PORT:USER:PASS; residential and mobile lines look like HOST:PORT:USER:PASS.
2. 2

   Turn it into a proxy URL

   Reorder it as http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT, or pick the USER:PASS@IP:PORT format in the dashboard so you only add the scheme.
3. 3

   Send a test request

   Run curl -x http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT https://api.ipify.org. The response is the IP address websites see.
4. 4

   Compare with your own IP

   Run curl https://api.ipify.org without -x. If the two addresses differ and the first one is your proxy's, you are connected.

Use the http:// proxy scheme for both HTTP and HTTPS websites. For an https:// target, cURL opens a CONNECT tunnel through the proxy and TLS runs end to end between cURL and the website, so you never need -k or --insecure because of the proxy.

curl -x http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT https://api.ipify.org

curl -x http://HOST:PORT -U USERNAME:PASSWORD https://api.ipify.org

curl -x socks5h://USERNAME:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT https://api.ipify.org

# the same, with long-form flags
curl --socks5-hostname HOST:PORT --proxy-user USERNAME:PASSWORD https://api.ipify.org

-U is short for --proxy-user; it keeps the password out of the proxy URL, which helps when the password contains @ or :. Inside a URL, percent-encode those characters instead (@ becomes %40).

cURL reads the http_proxy, https_proxy and no_proxy environment variables. It accepts HTTPS_PROXY in upper case but ignores upper-case HTTP_PROXY for security reasons, so the lower-case names are the safe choice.

export http_proxy="http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT"
export https_proxy="http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT"
export no_proxy="localhost,127.0.0.1"

curl https://api.ipify.org

proxy = "http://HOST:PORT"
proxy-user = "USERNAME:PASSWORD"

Skip the proxy for a single call with --noproxy '*'.

Save your ISP lines to proxies.txt (one IP:PORT:USER:PASS per line) and loop over them. -m 15 caps each request at 15 seconds, and read puts everything after the third colon into the password, so passwords with colons survive.

while IFS=: read -r host port user pass; do
  printf "%s:%s -> " "$host" "$port"
  curl -s -m 15 -x "http://$user:$pass@$host:$port" https://api.ipify.org || printf "failed"
  echo
done < proxies.txt

curl -s -o /dev/null -x http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT \
  -w "status %{http_code}  connect %{time_connect}s  total %{time_total}s\n" \
  https://www.example.com

api.ipify.org returns only the IP address. Add -v to see the proxy handshake: a working HTTP(S) proxy prints CONNECT api.ipify.org:443 followed by HTTP/1.1 200 Connection established.

curl -v -x http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT https://api.ipify.org

Open What is my IP? through the proxy to see the address and headers a website receives, or paste up to ten lines into the free proxy checker to test connectivity, latency and exit IP before you start.

Still stuck? Our 24/7 support team answers fast: contact us with the error and the line you used (leave the password out).