A proxy server is a computer that fetches web pages on your behalf and returns them to your browser. Your device asks the proxy, the proxy asks the destination site, and the page comes back through the proxy. The destination sees the proxy’s address, not yours.
That single sentence is the whole idea. Everything else is nuance — where the proxy sits, what it filters, and what it decides to show you back.
Two kinds worth knowing
There are dozens of proxy variants in enterprise networking, but for anyone reading this page the two that matter are:
- A forward proxy sits between your device and the internet. Your browser asks it for pages instead of the destination site. This is what a web proxy like AnyProxy is — you use it to reach a site your local network won’t fetch for you directly.
- A reverse proxy sits between the internet and a website. Visitors ask the reverse proxy, and it decides which internal server actually serves the page. Cloudflare, Nginx and Varnish are common reverse proxies. You never “use” one on purpose — you talk to one every time you open a big site.
For the rest of this piece we mean the forward kind, unless we say otherwise.
How a web proxy actually works
- You open anyproxy.site and type a URL.
- Our server receives the request over HTTPS and looks up the destination site.
- Our server fetches the page, streams it back to your browser, and rewrites every internal link so subsequent clicks route through us too.
- Your browser renders it. As far as your local network can see, you are talking to anyproxy.site — nothing else.
When a proxy is the right tool
Pick a web proxy when:
- You need to open one site right now, on a locked network, from a device you can’t install anything on.
- You want to try a page from a different country’s routing without changing your whole device’s network settings.
- You want to share a link that opens for someone else regardless of where they are.
Pick a VPN when you want every app on your device on a different network at once — for privacy on public Wi-Fi, for cross-app workflows, for streaming services that check for VPN-consistent IPs.
Do proxies hide your IP?
The destination site sees the proxy’s IP, not yours. Your local network still sees you connecting to the proxy over an encrypted link — it just cannot see which sites you are opening through it. If you sign in to a site while proxied, the site knows it is you the moment you log in; the proxy only hides your address, not your identity.
Is a proxy the same as a VPN?
No. A VPN is an app that runs on your operating system and wraps every request from every program in an encrypted tunnel. A proxy is a server that fetches individual pages. Both can move where a network request appears to come from; only a VPN protects your whole device.
The short version: a proxy is a tab, a VPN is a device.
Try it
If you have a page you can’t open, paste it into anyproxy.site and we will fetch it for you. Six regions, no install, no signup.