Squid proxy
Hacker ApprovedCaching proxy in Networking & smart home
Free, long-established proxy that people use to allow only certain domains, cache downloads and inspect HTTPS traffic. Critics say its documentation is hard to learn.
Free, long-established proxy that people use to allow only certain domains, cache downloads and inspect HTTPS traffic. Critics say its documentation is hard to learn.
20 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 18
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 90%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 18 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 9 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 8 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
Domain allowlists and access control lists
“set up a transparent proxy with squid + SquidGuard for content filtering and time restrictions”
Comment from 12 Dec 2025 in “Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban” “Configure Squid Access Control Lists to only permit specific domains.”
Comment from 13 Jul 2026 in “Grok uploaded my user directory to xAI's servers” “a squid proxy to allow limited trusted domains through”
Comment from 31 Mar 2026 in “Axios Compromised on NPM – Malicious Versions Drop Remote Access Trojan” - Comment from 29 Dec 2025 in “Kubernetes Egress Control with Squid Proxy”
Caching speeds up repeated downloads
“A basic Squid caching proxy should be enough at least for a pure pull-through like Maven Central.”
Comment from 17 Oct 2026 in “Recipes Are Moving from Maven Central to the Code Genome Project” “I like to use a Squid SSL Bump MitM proxy so I can create ACL's and cache content in RAM”
Comment from 28 Jun 2026 in “Don't Use VPN Servces” “configuring a squid proxy for my PS4 vastly sped up my downloads”
Comment from 28 Aug 2026 in “Debugging my new network, when 10 Gigabit Ethernet Runs at 300 Megabits” SSL bump inspection and filtering
“The easiest route here in my opinion aside from DNS services that claim to block adult content would be to use a Squid SSL Bump proxy.”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Fighting the age-gated internet” “The open source solution is to configure the latest Squid proxy as a Squid SSL Bump proxy.”
Comment from 26 Apr 2026 in “Firefox Has Integrated Brave's Adblock Engine” “I like to use a Squid SSL Bump MitM proxy so I can create ACL's and cache content in RAM”
Comment from 28 Jun 2026 in “Don't Use VPN Servces”
What people said
23 of the 27 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“A basic Squid caching proxy should be enough at least for a pure pull-through like Maven Central.”
“It was more annoying than not (except for images, where I do think it was quite useful)”
“configuring a squid proxy for my PS4 vastly sped up my downloads”
“Literally every one of these has caused hilarious and disastrous failures for me in my career.”
“Squid can log URL's, methods (GET|POST|PUT) etc...”
“Configure Squid Access Control Lists to only permit specific domains.”
“I like to use a Squid SSL Bump MitM proxy so I can create ACL's and cache content in RAM”
“The open source solution is to configure the latest Squid proxy as a Squid SSL Bump proxy.”
“a squid proxy to allow limited trusted domains through”
“so I do think that for this specific purpose it works quite well”
“It works beautifully well.”
“it is indeed a simple and good solution for smaller workloads”
“it's great to hear that the overall approach is sound”
“Part of the reason I chose Squid here was precisely because I found it interesting to reuse something that was such a staple of web architecture patterns.”
“The great thing about using squid and disabling DNS is you can stop DNS and HTTP exfil”
“it is indeed an ancient piece of software, but I have managed to run it successfully before”
“this looks great to control their egress”
“The docs (perhaps intentionally) make you work for the hidden knowledge of these dark arts.”
“Squid Cache was a little bit inflexible in terms of making sure that the browsed data would be stored forever”
“Squid better for a persistent proxy”
“set up a transparent proxy with squid + SquidGuard for content filtering and time restrictions”
“Thanks! I was just planning on manually building something like this when my little's got older. I'll give this a go!”
“The easiest route here in my opinion aside from DNS services that claim to block adult content would be to use a Squid SSL Bump proxy.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.