ProxyCat: Effortless IP Rotation for Testing and Deployment
If you've ever needed to test how your application behaves from different geographic locations, or if you've hit rate limits during deployment scripts, you know the pain of IP restrictions. Manually switching proxies or VPNs is clunky and breaks automation workflows. That's where ProxyCat comes in—a simple yet powerful solution that makes IP rotation as easy as running a command.
This open-source tool provides a programmatic way to route your traffic through different IP addresses, perfect for developers who need reliable IP rotation without the overhead of complex proxy setups.
What It Does
ProxyCat is a command-line tool that gives you instant access to multiple IP addresses through proxy servers. Think of it as a proxy manager that lets you switch your outgoing IP with a single command. Instead of manually configuring proxy settings or juggling multiple VPN connections, you can integrate ProxyCat directly into your testing scripts or deployment pipelines.
The core functionality is straightforward: it provides you with proxy endpoints that you can use with tools like curl, wget, or directly in your applications. When you need a different IP, you just switch to another proxy endpoint from the available pool.
Why It's Cool
The beauty of ProxyCat lies in its simplicity and developer-focused design. Unlike commercial proxy services that often require complex API integrations or browser extensions, ProxyCat gives you clean proxy endpoints that work with virtually any HTTP client. This means you can drop it into existing workflows without rewriting your tools.
For testing, this is incredibly valuable. You can simulate requests from different locations to test geo-based features, or distribute load across multiple IPs to avoid triggering rate limits during aggressive testing. For deployment scripts, it means you can rotate IPs when pushing to multiple environments or when dealing with services that have strict IP-based restrictions.
The implementation is clever too—it's lightweight and doesn't require running background services or dealing with complex configuration files. You get working proxies without the operational overhead that usually comes with proxy management.
How to Try It
Getting started with ProxyCat takes about two minutes:
git clone https://github.com/honmashironeko/ProxyCat
cd ProxyCat
Check the repository's README for the current list of available proxy endpoints. You can test them immediately with curl:
curl -x http://proxy-endpoint:port http://httpbin.org/ip
Each endpoint gives you a different outgoing IP, so you can rotate through them in your scripts. The project documentation shows how to integrate these proxies with various programming languages and tools—everything from Python requests to automated testing frameworks.
Final Thoughts
ProxyCat solves a specific but common problem in web development and testing workflows. It's not trying to be everything to everyone—it just does IP rotation well, without complications. For developers building web scrapers, testing geo-distributed applications, or dealing with IP-based rate limiting, this tool can save significant time and frustration.
The straightforward approach means you'll spend less time configuring and more time building. It's the kind of utility that quietly makes your development life easier, and that's exactly what good tools should do.
— @githubprojects