Webshare Free Proxy: How to Get and Use 10 Free Proxies (2026)

A Webshare free proxy account hands you 10 working proxies and 1GB of bandwidth every month, with no credit card and no ticking trial clock - it is a permanent free plan, not a bait offer (per webshare.io, verified Aug 2026). This guide covers the free tier end to end: how to get the 10 free proxies, how to use them from a browser, curl, or Python, where the free tier runs out, and when it is worth paying. I run Webshare's paid static ISP and rotating residential plans for my own rank-monitoring and scraping - not the free 10 - so I will be straight about what the free tier is good for and where it stops, rather than overselling it. I earn a commission if you upgrade through my links - see my affiliate disclosure page - but it never changes the advice.

What you get free: 10 shared datacenter proxies, 1GB of bandwidth per month, HTTP and SOCKS5 support, and no credit card - all on a permanent free plan (per webshare.io, verified Aug 2026). Enough to test your setup and run light jobs before you spend a cent.

By Jasmine, who runs proxies for web-scraping and SEO-data projects. Last updated: 24 August 2026.

What you get with Webshare's free proxies

Before you sign up, know the exact shape of the free tier. Here is the full spec, as published on Webshare's own free-proxy page and verified in August 2026 - terms do change, so treat it as a dated snapshot.

Every figure above is per webshare.io, verified Aug 2026 - check the current terms before you rely on them. The one row I will not put a number on is location: Webshare's free-proxy page does not state how many countries the free IPs cover, so I will not invent one. Assume location choice is limited and confirm what you get in your own dashboard.

The honest way to treat the free tier is as a proving ground rather than a production plan: it is there to answer one question - do these IPs work on your targets - before any money changes hands. I will be upfront that I did not build my own work on the free 10; my rank-monitoring and scraping need clean, fresh IPs, so I run Webshare's paid static ISP and rotating residential instead. That is exactly why this section stays factual about what the free tier can and cannot do rather than dressing it up as something it is not.

How to sign up for your 10 free proxies

Signup is quick and self-service - no sales call, no minimum commitment. The flow below is generic so it survives minor dashboard changes; confirm each step against the live site as you go.

1. Go to webshare.io and create a free account with an email address and password.
2. Confirm your email from the verification message Webshare sends.
3. Choose the free plan - you are not asked for a credit card to start.
4. Land on the dashboard, where your 10 free proxies are already provisioned and ready.
5. Check the bandwidth meter, which shows your 1GB monthly allowance ticking from zero.

That is the whole on-ramp - 10 usable proxies a couple of minutes from a cold start. You can create your free Webshare account and set it up as you read the next sections.

The signup is genuinely self-service - no sales call, and no card for the free plan. I went straight to a paid plan for my own work, so I will not put a stopwatch on the free flow; the one step worth confirming live is email verification, since that is the part that tends to vary.

Find your proxy list and choose authentication

Once you are in, open the proxy list view. Each of your 10 proxies is laid out with its IP address, port, username, password, and location - that single screen has everything you need to make a request. The rest is choosing how to authenticate.

Webshare gives you two ways to prove a request is yours, and the right one depends on where your code runs:

• Username and password: the most flexible option. Your proxy credentials travel inside each request, so it works from any machine or IP - your laptop, a serverless function, a CI runner. This is the default I reach for when the source IP is not fixed.
• IP authorization: you whitelist your server's outbound IP address, and then no credentials go in your code at all. It is cleaner and a little safer for a fixed-IP server or VPS, but useless if your outbound IP changes.

To get the list out of the dashboard, use the download or export option. Webshare lets you pull the list in common shapes - username:password, IP-only, or IP:port:username:password - and offers an API endpoint if you would rather fetch your proxies programmatically instead of downloading a file each time. Pick the format that matches how your code parses proxies and you are ready to make a request. If you want the mechanics of dropping these credentials into a request, I cover them in my guides to using a proxy with curl and the Python requests proxy setup.

The dashboard is the part I can speak to from real use: it is clear and well organised. The proxy list puts each IP, port, username, and password on one screen, so getting from login to a working request is quick once you copy a row. That clarity is one reason I have stayed on Webshare for my own rank-monitoring and scraping work.

How to use your free Webshare proxies (with examples)

Here is the payoff. There are three practical ways to route traffic through a Webshare proxy, from no-code to a real script. In every example, replace USERNAME, PASSWORD, PROXY_IP, and PORT with a real row copied from your dashboard proxy list.

In the browser (no code)

The fastest way to confirm a proxy works is to route your browser through it. The simplest path is a proxy-switcher browser extension (Webshare offers a Chrome extension), where you paste the IP, port, username, and password and toggle it on. If you prefer no extensions, you can enter the same details in your operating system or browser proxy settings. This is ideal for a quick manual check or light browsing, and it needs zero code.

With curl

curl is the quickest sanity check from a terminal. Point it at an echo endpoint that returns your exit IP, and if the response shows the proxy's IP rather than your own, it is working:

curl --proxy http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@PROXY_IP:PORT https://httpbin.dev/anything

The JSON that comes back includes the origin IP the request exited from. See the proxy's IP there and you have a confirmed, working setup.

With Python requests

For real work you will script it. The requests library takes a proxies dictionary, and the same credentials go in both the HTTP and HTTPS entries:

import requests

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

r = requests.get("https://httpbin.dev/anything", proxies=proxies, timeout=20)
print(r.json()["origin"])

If you want to route over SOCKS5 instead of HTTP, install the extra with pip install "requests[socks]" and switch the scheme to socks5://. One important note on the free tier: you get 10 individual IP:port proxies, not a single rotating endpoint. To spread requests across them you loop through the list yourself in code. Webshare does offer a rotating backbone endpoint on some plans, but confirm whether it is available on free before you count on it - do not assume the free tier includes rotating residential IPs, because it does not.

Whichever path you use, scrape responsibly: respect each site's robots.txt and terms of service, pull public data only, and rate-limit yourself. That is good practice, not legal advice. Free proxies are a fine tool for legitimate B2B work - web scraping for research, price and SERP monitoring, ad verification, market research, and SEO data collection - and that is the frame to keep them in.

The honest limits of the free tier

The free tier is useful, but it has a ceiling. Here is where it stops, stated plainly so you can plan around it rather than hit a wall mid-project.

• 1 GB of bandwidth a month is small. A data-heavy scrape - image-laden pages, large API pulls, anything at volume - can burn through it fast, and then you are done until the next cycle.
• Only 10 IPs. That is fine for testing and light jobs, but it is a thin pool for anything that needs to look like many different visitors.
• Shared datacenter IPs. The free proxies are shared datacenter proxies, and sites with aggressive anti-bot fingerprinting flag datacenter ranges quickly. Expect the toughest targets to block them.
• No residential IPs on free. If your target only trusts real-ISP addresses, the free tier cannot give you that - residential is a paid product.
• Location choice is limited on free, and Webshare does not publish a free-tier country count, so do not plan around specific geos here.
• Shared pools can hit rate limits. Because you share these IPs with other free users, hammering one target can draw 429 responses under load.

None of that makes the free tier bad - it makes it honest. A genuine free tier of your own authenticated IPs beats scraping random free proxy lists, which are slow, unreliable, and often unsafe. It just means the free plan is a starting point, not a destination.

I will not fake a war story about hitting the free ceiling, because I run paid ISP and residential IPs, not the free 10. The limits above are the real, documented edges of the plan - the 1GB cap and the shared datacenter IPs are what you will feel first on any serious job. Treat the free tier as the place to prove your setup, then upgrade the moment one of those limits gets in your way.

When to upgrade from free to paid (and to what)

Think about upgrading symptom-first: let the way the free tier fails you point at the right paid product, not the most expensive one by default. Here is the map I use.

• You keep burning through 1GB and the targets are tolerant - move to more datacenter bandwidth. Shared datacenter starts from around $0.03 per proxy.
• You are getting blocked on tough targets - step up to rotating residential proxies, which read as real ISP addresses. These start from around $7/GB and drop toward $1.40/GB at higher volume.
• You need static IPs that read as a real ISP for long, stable sessions - choose static residential / ISP proxies, from around $0.30 per proxy.
• You need more than 10 IPs or a clean, sole-use pool - move to a dedicated plan so you are not sharing reputation with anyone.

All of those figures are approximate entry pricing as of August 2026, and Webshare changes its plans, so verify current numbers on the Webshare pricing page before you buy. For the fuller picture on how the paid product actually performs, my full Webshare review walks through the trade-offs and who should pick a rival instead.

Is Webshare's free proxy safe and legit?

Short answer: yes. Webshare is a real, established company that runs its own infrastructure and is owned by the premium proxy provider Oxylabs, which acquired it in 2022 (I disclose this as a trust signal, not a slogan). The free tier is a genuine permanent plan, not a disguised trial. And unlike scraped "free proxy list" sites, these are your own authenticated IPs - far safer than anonymous public proxies of unknown origin.

Safe also depends on how you use it. Webshare is built for legitimate B2B work on public data, within each site's rules. Used that way it is a clean, professional tool. If the free tier does not fit your job, I would rather point you to honest options than oversell it - see my Webshare alternatives comparison, or line up the whole field in my roundup of the best proxy services. And if you just want to test your own targets first, you can start on the free tier and see for yourself before paying anything.

Frequently asked questions

How many free proxies does Webshare give?

Webshare gives you 10 free proxies plus 1GB of bandwidth per month, with no credit card required (per webshare.io, verified Aug 2026). They are shared datacenter IPs on a permanent free plan, aimed at testing and light jobs rather than production volume.

Are Webshare's free proxies really free?

Yes - it is a permanent free plan, not a trial, and no card is asked for. You keep 10 proxies and a fresh 1GB allowance each month. Free-tier terms can change, so verify the current plan on webshare.io before you rely on it.

Do Webshare free proxies work for web scraping?

For light, responsible scraping, yes. But they are shared datacenter IPs, so sites with aggressive anti-bot fingerprinting will flag and block them on tough targets. Use them to prototype, then move to residential for the hard sites.

Are the free proxies residential?

No. The free tier is shared datacenter IPs only. Residential proxies - the kind that read as real home ISP addresses and pass on strict targets - are a paid Webshare product, not part of the free plan.

How do I use my Webshare proxies?

Copy a proxy's IP, port, username, and password from your dashboard, then authenticate by username/password or by whitelisting your server IP. Route traffic through it via a browser extension, a curl command, or an HTTP client like Python requests.