Only 4% of 62,541 Free GitHub Proxies Work, Week-Long Test Finds

A developer tested 62,541 free proxies sourced from public GitHub aggregator lists over a seven-day period, checking each one continuously on a rolling five-minute cycle. Only 2,236 proxies — roughly 4% — were found alive at any given moment, with 'alive' defined merely as completing a TCP handshake once. Median latency among live proxies was approximately 2,900 milliseconds, and uptime across the live set was just 44%, meaning a working proxy had roughly even odds of failing on the very next check. The tester also warned that some free proxies may actively intercept unencrypted traffic, making them a security risk for any sensitive data. The author, who runs a paid proxy service called Proxmint, published the full breakdown of alive rates by protocol, geography, and latency on their website.