What is p2proxy?

p2proxy is a small Rust daemon you run on your own machine. It exposes a local SOCKS5 endpoint and forwards every outbound connection through a peer node in the Bitping network — instead of through a centralised proxy gateway.

It’s built on libp2p. Direct peer-to-peer connections are the norm; relays are the fallback.

Who it’s for

p2proxy is a developer tool. It’s a good fit if you:

• Run web scrapers (Playwright, Puppeteer, Selenium, raw HTTP) and want diverse residential IPs without paying per-GB to a gateway provider.
• Run browser automation / QA that needs to test your product from many geographic regions.
• Need multi-geo HTTP traffic for research, journalism, or security work and want a self-hosted, auditable daemon doing it.

It’s not a consumer VPN. It’s a proxy daemon — a piece of infrastructure you wire into your own stack.

Core features

• SOCKS5 endpoint on a port you choose. Works with anything that speaks SOCKS5.
• Peer filtering — minimum bandwidth, ISO-3166 country code, or a specific libp2p peer ID.
• Multiple endpoints in one daemon — run a US pool, a JP pool and a high-bandwidth pool from one Config.yaml.
• Connection pooling — warm libp2p streams so per-request handshakes stay fast.
• Live TUI showing peer connections, throughput and session count.
• Prometheus metrics at :9091/metrics.
• Open source under PolyForm Shield 1.0.

What you’ll need

• A Bitping API key — sign up at bitping.com, copy the key from your dashboard. Usage is attributed to your account.
• macOS or Linux (Windows is deferred — use WSL2 in the meantime).
• A SOCKS5-capable client. Almost everything qualifies; if you’re unsure, see Integrations.

Next steps

1. Install — Homebrew, .deb / .rpm / .apk, Docker image, or source.
2. Quickstart — 30 seconds from zero to first proxied request.
3. Configuration reference — every Config.yaml field, defaults, and tuning notes.
4. Troubleshooting — symptom → cause → fix.