Transparent, Anonymous and Elite Proxies Explained

Old proxy lists sort proxies into three levels: transparent, anonymous and elite. The levels describe what a proxy tells a website about you, and they come from the era when most traffic was plain HTTP. They are still worth understanding, with one important caveat further down.

Transparent proxies

A transparent proxy passes your real IP address to the website, usually in a header such as X-Forwarded-For, and often announces itself with a Via header. It hides nothing. Companies, schools and public Wi-Fi use them for caching and filtering, and some free proxy lists are full of them.

Anonymous proxies

An anonymous proxy does not send your real IP address, so the website sees only the proxy's address. It still identifies itself as a proxy, for example with a Via or Proxy-Connection header, so a website can tell you are behind one and may block or challenge you.

Elite proxies

An elite proxy, also called high-anonymity, sends neither your IP address nor any sign that a proxy is involved. The request looks as if it came directly from the proxy's address. This is the level to want for anything that depends on not being identified as a proxy user, although "elite" describes headers only, not the reputation of the IP itself.

What are the three proxy anonymity levels?

The three levels describe what a proxy tells a website about you. A transparent proxy passes your real IP address, an anonymous proxy hides it but still identifies itself as a proxy, and an elite proxy sends neither your address nor any sign that a proxy is involved.

How the levels are tested

A test server receives a request through the proxy and inspects the headers. If it sees your real IP, the proxy is transparent. If your IP is hidden but proxy headers are present, it is anonymous. If neither shows, it is elite. You can see which headers your own browser sends with our HTTP headers viewer.

The caveat: HTTPS makes the levels mostly irrelevant

For https:// sites your client asks the proxy to open an encrypted tunnel and talks to the site directly inside it. The proxy cannot add or change headers in that traffic, so it cannot leak your IP through them, whatever its label says. That is why our proxy checker runs its tests over HTTPS and does not show a transparent, anonymous or elite label: it would be a guess. The label still matters if you send plain HTTP requests through the proxy.

What actually gives you away

• WebRTC. A browser can reveal your real IP through WebRTC even when traffic goes through a proxy or VPN. Test it with the WebRTC leak test.
• DNS. If your device looks up website names itself, your resolver sees where you browse. See the DNS note in HTTP vs SOCKS5.
• The IP's reputation. A clean header does not help if the address belongs to a data center or is on a blocklist. Check the exit IP with the IP reputation tool.
• Browser fingerprint and cookies. Sites can recognise you from your browser details and from cookies, whatever proxy you use. Our browser info page shows what you expose.

For the wider picture, read can someone track you by your IP address.