How to use proxies with Python Requests

• 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.
• Python 3.9 or later and pip install requests.
• For SOCKS5: pip install "requests[socks]" (adds PySocks).

New to proxies? For the overview, read Using proxies with cURL, Python and Node.js and Proxies with Python Requests, Playwright and Puppeteer. This guide goes deeper on Python Requests 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

   Install Requests

   Run pip install requests (add "requests[socks]" if you plan to use SOCKS5).
2. 2

   Build the proxy URL

   Turn your dashboard line into http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT.
3. 3

   Set both keys

   Use the same URL for http and https. The key is the scheme of the website you request, not of the proxy.
4. 4

   Send a test request

   Request https://api.ipify.org with a timeout and print the result.

import requests

proxy = "http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT"
proxies = {"http": proxy, "https": proxy}

response = requests.get("https://api.ipify.org", proxies=proxies, timeout=30)
print(response.text)  # the exit IP

# pip install "requests[socks]"
import requests

proxy = "socks5h://USERNAME:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT"
proxies = {"http": proxy, "https": proxy}

print(requests.get("https://api.ipify.org", proxies=proxies, timeout=30).text)

If the password has characters such as @, : or #, quote it first with urllib.parse.quote(password, safe="").

A Session keeps cookies and reuses connections, which is what you want on a static ISP proxy that holds one account's login. Set the proxy once on the session.

import requests

session = requests.Session()
session.proxies.update({
    "http": "http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT",
    "https": "http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT",
})
session.headers["User-Agent"] = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64)"

session.get("https://example.com/login", timeout=30)

Requests also honours HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY and NO_PROXY environment variables. A proxies argument wins over them, unless you disable trust_env on the session.

Export your ISP proxies as IP:PORT:USER:PASS lines into proxies.txt and cycle through them.

import itertools
import requests

def to_url(line: str) -> str:
    host, port, user, password = line.strip().split(":", 3)
    return f"http://{user}:{password}@{host}:{port}"

with open("proxies.txt") as f:
    pool = itertools.cycle([to_url(line) for line in f if line.strip()])

for url in ["https://api.ipify.org"] * 5:
    proxy = next(pool)
    r = requests.get(url, proxies={"http": proxy, "https": proxy}, timeout=30)
    print(r.text)

The first example prints the exit IP. To see the headers a website receives as well, request https://httpbin.org/headers through the same proxies dict.

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).