Authenticated proxies in Node.js: Axios, native fetch and Got

Pick the snippet for your HTTP client

All three clients take the same proxy URL. Build it from the ip:port:user:pass line in your order; the scheme stays http:// because the client speaks HTTP to the proxy and tunnels TLS through it.

Why `proxy: false` matters in Axios

Axios checks the HTTP_PROXY and HTTPS_PROXY environment variables on its own. If one of them is set on the machine (common in CI runners and containers) and you also pass an agent, the two configurations collide. proxy: false tells Axios to ignore the environment and its built-in proxy logic, so the agent is the only thing deciding where the request goes.

Reusing agents across many requests

• Create one agent per proxy IP outside your request loop; the agent holds keep-alive sockets, and a new agent per call throws them away
• With several proxies, keep a Map from IP to agent and pick from it, rather than building agents on the fly
• Give every call a timeout (for example timeout: 10000 in Axios) so one stalled target does not hold a worker forever
• Need the proxy list as data? The proxy format converter turns ip:port:user:pass lines into a JSON array you can require or import

What a stable IP gives a Node.js job

A ProxyV4 private IPv4 belongs to one customer for the whole rental and keeps the same address when you renew, so an allow-listed API, a logged-in session or a rate-limit budget tied to that IP stays valid between deploys. Bandwidth is not metered, which keeps long-running workers predictable. For crawling patterns and pacing, see the web scraping use case.

Step by step

1. 1

   Install the client and the agent

   Run npm install axios https-proxy-agent in the project (or npm install undici if you use native fetch).

2. 2

   Build the agent once

   Create const agent = new HttpsProxyAgent('http://user:pass@ip:port'); with the values from your ProxyV4 order.

3. 3

   Send a request through it

   Call const res = await axios.get('https://proxyv4.com/api/my-ip', { httpsAgent: agent, proxy: false, timeout: 10000 });.

4. 4

   Compare the IP

   console.log(res.data) should print the proxy IP. If it prints your server's own address, the agent was not applied.

Frequently asked questions