mitmproxy
Hacker ApprovedRanked 2 of 3 HTTP debugging proxies by recommenders
Free HTTP and HTTPS interception proxy that people trust for inspecting and modifying traffic, with Python scripting. Common caveats: terminal keybindings are hard to learn, and not all workflows work yet.
Free HTTP and HTTPS interception proxy that people trust for inspecting and modifying traffic, with Python scripting. Common caveats: terminal keybindings are hard to learn, and not all workflows work yet.
36 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 27
- criticize it
- 9
- approval share
- 75%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 27 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Scriptable with Python
“Python for tweaking http streams in mitmproxy is powerful and rather friendly for what you get in return”
Comment from 6 Nov 2025 in “Ratatui – App Showcase” “mitmproxy has advanced scripting capabilities with a decent amount of community examples available”
Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “Charles Proxy” “I have had great experience scripting and running mitmproxy for these purposes”
Comment from 29 Dec 2025 in “Kubernetes Egress Control with Squid Proxy” - Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “Charles Proxy”
Reliable and trusted over years
“mitmproxy is very reliable as it has years of polish”
Comment from 7 Jun 2026 in “Show HN: Oproxy – inspect and modify network traffic from the browser” “Mitm proxy is very reliable”
Comment from 7 Jun 2026 in “Show HN: Oproxy – inspect and modify network traffic from the browser” “I know and trust mitmproxy.”
Comment from 29 Jan 2026 in “A MitM proxy to see what your LLM tools are sending” Easy setup, works out of box
“the Docker version is really easy to set up”
Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “Charles Proxy” “nice to just have it working out of the box”
Comment from 22 Oct 2026 in “mitmproxy adds --emudhra option” “Takes like 5 mins to figure out.”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “Writing a good Claude.md” Captures HTTPS and WebSocket traffic
“A mitmproxy capture is higher fidelity and supports capturing modern features such as WebSockets”
Comment from 14 Jun 2026 in “Show HN: Kage – Shadow any website to a single binary for offline viewing” “I used to have a bunch of mitm commands in my bashrc to easily intercept https messages”
Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “Charles Proxy” “mitmproxy/Charles are great when the traffic is HTTP and on the network path”
Comment from 6 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: Reticle – Debug MCP Tool Calls from Claude/Cursor (Rust)”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Terminal keybindings hard to use
“I don't have much of a problem with their tmux-like UI, but I find mitmweb a lot easier to use than the keyboard shortcut based terminal navigation.”
Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “Charles Proxy” “until they changed all they keybindings around version 2”
Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “Charles Proxy” TLS handshake and certificate problems
“then the TLS handshake started failing and it kept requesting for re-authentication when proxied”
Comment from 28 Jan 2026 in “A MitM proxy to see what your LLM tools are sending” “mitmproxy doesnt check it even when ssl_insecure=false”
Comment from 29 Jan 2026 in “A MitM proxy to see what your LLM tools are sending”
Other HTTP debugging proxies people recommend
The two most recommended other HTTP debugging proxies, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Charles Proxy | 30 | 15 | 67% | 5 | 10 yrs4 owners | Approved |
| mitmproxyThis page | 27 | 9 | 75% | 7 | — | Approved |
| Proxyman | 20 | 4 | 83% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
35 of the 39 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“this glorious new mitmproxy feature”
“It has come to save the day on so many occasions.”
“nice to just have it working out of the box”
“includes the private key and doesn't bruteforce it in-band for every request”
“This is gonna be great to sniff apps in a couple older Android phones I have around.”
“It's very low level, sure, but it works.”
“A mitmproxy capture is higher fidelity and supports capturing modern features such as WebSockets”
“mitmproxy is very reliable as it has years of polish”
“whereas mitmproxy has python runtime”
“Mitm proxy is very reliable”
“Mitmproxy outside of vm replaces all "xyz" to "abc" for outgoing requests.”
“I use mitmproxy outside of agent vm”
“mitmproxy doesnt check it even when ssl_insecure=false”
“It shells out to mitmproxy with”
“It's actually really easy to use mitmproxy as a…proxy.”
“I know and trust mitmproxy.”
“then the TLS handshake started failing and it kept requesting for re-authentication when proxied”
“It's not fully working for all workflows yet. But it's getting close”
“mitmproxy/Charles are great when the traffic is HTTP and on the network path”
“I have had great experience scripting and running mitmproxy for these purposes”
“It’s working well so far.”
“That's what I usually use.”
“the Docker version is really easy to set up”
“What I really like about mitmproxy is that it runs on my server with a certificate I trusted on my phone.”
“I don't have much of a problem with their tmux-like UI, but I find mitmweb a lot easier to use than the keyboard shortcut based terminal navigation.”
“mitmproxy has advanced scripting capabilities with a decent amount of community examples available”
“I'd used mitmproxy to reverse engineer browser extensions and mobile apps and it did the trick.”
“Something all of these miss imo is a way to modify TLS handshakes.”
“I used to have a bunch of mitm commands in my bashrc to easily intercept https messages”
“At that point it was powerful and easily scriptable”
“The new-ish "Local Capture" and "WireGuard"-mode are quite nice.”
“until they changed all they keybindings around version 2”
“The closest free alternative is https://www.mitmproxy.org/ that is not even close.”
“Takes like 5 mins to figure out.”
“Python for tweaking http streams in mitmproxy is powerful and rather friendly for what you get in return”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.