Free Proxy Scripts: A Rundown

Choosing A Proxy Script

When it comes to starting a proxy site, choosing a script is one of your biggest decisions. This choice can determine the resources you will potentially need, such as bandwidth and RAM - Some scripts are heavier on certain resources while light on others. For example, CGI Proxy is heavy on your server’s processor, and therefore uses a lot of RAM, but is light on the bandwidth usage. On the opposite end of the spectrum, PHProxy doesn’t require a whole lot of RAM. So with PHProxy, you’re saving in the RAM department, but PHProxy doesn’t allow users to login to sites like MySpace and GMail… Unless you know a lot about programming and can customize the script. Anyway, let’s take a look at our contestants.

PHProxy

PHProxy (also known as ‘PHP Proxy’ and ‘Poxy’) is a free web-based HTTP proxy. It is arguably the most popular free proxy script out there. It was created in order to bypass firewalls and other proxy restrictions through a web-based interface. If the name didn’t give it away, PHProxy was programmed in PHP. It is a ‘cleaner’ script (so to speak) than CGI Proxy, and therefore it uses less resources. PHProxy doesn’t allow users to log in to some websites. This may affect the functionality of sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Keep in mind that these are some of the main sites that people are using proxy sites in order to access. PHProxy has several options, including disable JavaScript, accept cookies, show images, show referring website, strip meta information tags from pages, and more. As of this writing, the latest release is PHProxy 0.5 beta 2; that can be downloaded here. Depending on your design skills (or lack thereof) there are a decent amount of free proxy templates available for PHProxy on the internet… Meaning you download the template, make a few quick changes (to customize it), upload it to your server, and you’re done. Looking for templates? Check out PHProxy Themes and Free Proxy Templates.

CGI Proxy

CGIProxy is a Perl CGI script. CGI Proxy is neck-to-neck with PHProxy as the most popular free proxy script available. As I said before, it is uses more RAM than PHProxy does, but it also uses less bandwidth. Some people prefer to use CGI Proxy because it allows users to login to sites like MySpace. The latest version of CGIProxy is 2.1beta15, which can be downloaded here.

Surrogafier

Surrogafier is “an easy to install three tier web proxy written in PHP.” Surrogafier is completely free to use and distribute. Current features include the ability to remove cookies, the HTTP referer field, the HTTP user-agent field, scripts on the page, and objects, altering the user-agent string to whatever you please, and tunnelling your proxied traffic through a second proxy. As far as popularity goes, Surrogafier is right up there with Zelune. I haven’t seen it on too many sites yet, but it seems to be growing. The kind folks over at Bypasser.org have setup a demo version of Surrogafier which can be seen here. The latest version, Surrogafier 1.0-rc3, can be downloaded here.

Zelune

Zelune is a proxy script which uses CURL to download pages, which makes it faster than its PHP & CGI competitors. A proxy’s speed is dependant on several variables, including the capabilities of the server on which it is installed, but Zelune may be the fastest free web-based proxy script currently available. Zelune may be the least resource heavy free proxy script currently available. I don’t have any personal experience with this script, but I have seen a few other sites using it. I have yet to see an official homepage for the script, so you can download it here. I don’t have much more information about Zelune at this time, but why not install it and give it a try? To clear up any confusion, Zelune was formerly known as ‘Curl Proxy’.

bblocked

bblocked is a “web-based proxy bypasser” coded in PHP. The bblocked proxy engine “allows you to quickly and easily setup your very own proxy bypass site”. bblocked requires at least PHP 4.3.0, and is fully compatible with PHP 5. This script is unique in that it comes with several themes which are very nice looking. In terms of aesthetics, bblocked is by far the best script available. I haven’t seen it installed on many sites, though, so performance is a whole different issue. The latest version of bblocked is version 5.5 beta, and it can be downloaded here.

Glype Proxy

Glype Proxy is a free proxy script. It was also written in PHP, and it utilizes the cURL library. Glype appears to be the first proxy script to feature caching. Caching reduces the load of the server it is installed on. Glype Proxy also allows webmasters to define elements to remove from sites. If you don’t want the users of your proxy to use up a lot of bandwidth, you can configure Glype to ignore certain file types (such as movies, music, and flash objects) that tend to be bandwidth-intensive. Glype was written with clearly commented code - Webmasters who aren’t familiar with PHP won’t feel completely lost when looking at the code. Glype Proxy is still in beta, but it has all the core features of a proxy script. The latest version of Glype Proxy is 0.1B, which can be downloaded here.

That sums it up for now… But new versions of free proxy scripts, as well as entire new proxy scripts, are constantly being released! Keep checking Free2Surf Proxy Blog for the latest news regarding free web-based proxy scripts, and much more!