HTTP Proxy

An HTTP proxy forwards HTTP and HTTPS requests between a client and the internet. It's the most common proxy type and is natively supported by all web browsers, most scraping libraries, and automation tools.

HTTP proxies can inspect request headers, which allows them to offer features like caching, authentication, and content filtering. They're the standard choice for web scraping and browser automation.

How it works

For plain HTTP, the client sends the full URL to the proxy and the proxy issues the request on its behalf. For HTTPS, the client first sends a CONNECT request naming host and port; the proxy opens a TCP tunnel and from then on the TLS handshake happens end-to-end between client and origin, so the proxy never sees the decrypted payload. This is why an HTTP proxy can route HTTPS traffic without breaking certificate validation.

Authentication is usually basic auth in the proxy URL: http://user:pass@gateway:port. Every major library reads this natively: requests, httpx, Scrapy, Playwright, Puppeteer, undici, Go's net/http. For browser automation, pass --proxy-server at launch and use the credentials helper. Murphy's HTTP gateway is the same endpoint as SOCKS5; the protocol switch happens on the client. Most teams stick to HTTP because every tool supports it out of the box.