HTTP vs HTTPS vs SOCKS5 — which protocol should I use

LimeProxies exposes both HTTP(S) and SOCKS5 on your assigned endpoints. The right choice depends on what your client is doing.

HTTP / HTTPS proxies

An HTTP proxy understands the web protocol. It reads the request line, can route on the hostname, and for HTTPS it opens a CONNECT tunnel and passes the encrypted bytes through without seeing inside them.

Use it for: browsers, scrapers, curl, requests/axios, anything speaking HTTP.

SOCKS5 proxies

SOCKS5 sits lower down. It forwards any TCP connection without caring what protocol runs inside, and it can carry UDP and DNS lookups as well.

Use it for: mail clients, IRC, game clients, torrent clients, SSH, database connections, and tools like Proxifier that push a whole application through a proxy.

Practical rules

• If your tool has a "HTTP proxy" field, use HTTP. It is the better-supported path.
• If your traffic is not HTTP, use SOCKS5.
• Resolving DNS through SOCKS5 rather than locally stops your real resolver from leaking the hostnames you are visiting.

SOCKS5 needs to be switched on for your account first — see How to enable SOCKS5 from Limeproxies Dashboard.