What are the best Squid alternatives?

Squid is described as 'caching proxy for the Web supporting HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and more. It reduces bandwidth and improves response times by caching and reusing frequently-requested web pages. Squid has extensive access controls and makes a great server accelerator' and is a popular app in the file sharing category. There are more than 10 alternatives to Squid for a variety of platforms, including Linux, Mac, Windows, BSD and Self-Hosted solutions. The best alternative is Varnish, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like Squid are Privoxy, TinyProxy, hBlock and Proxomitron.

Squid alternatives are mainly Ad Blockers but may also be Firewalls or Anti-Malware Apps. Filter by these if you want a narrower list of alternatives or looking for a specific functionality of Squid.

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Squid

Free • Open Source

Windows
Linux
BSD
Self-Hosted
Solaris
FreeBSD
OpenSolaris
NetBSD
OpenBSD

Squid is a caching proxy for the Web supporting HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and more. It reduces bandwidth and improves response...

Learn more about Squid

Varnish
Do you think this is a good alternative?
Yes
No
Free • Open Source
Linux
17 alternatives to Varnish
Varnish Cache is an open source, state of the art HTTP application accelerator.
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Varnish Features
Load balancing
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Varnish vs Squid opinions
This alternative is disputed. Varnish is still a legitimate alternative to Squid, but it might have issues that some users think are important.
Guest
It is an alternative for the server-side use of squid. It is not suitable for the client-side functionality
Negative comment•
8
Privoxy
Do you think this is a good alternative?
Yes
No
Free • Open Source
Ad Blocker
Mac
Windows
Linux
49 alternatives to Privoxy
Privoxy is a non-caching web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for enhancing privacy, modifying web page data and HTTP headers, controlling access, and removing ads and other obnoxious Internet junk.

Privoxy has no features, suggest some!
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Privoxy vs Squid opinions
Some users think Privoxy is a great alternative to Squid, some don't.
all • positive • negative relevance • date
Guest
It accomplishes the same thing except for one feature: the caching aspect.
Top positive comment•
3

Guest
Squid is a caching proxy. Privoxy is a non-caching software. There is no overlap in the use-cases for those types of software.
Top negative comment•
0

Guest
There is no similarity between the two applications. Squid is a caching proxy. Privoxy is not.
Negative comment•
0

Guest
Privoxy doesn't cache web content.
Negative comment•
-1

Guest
No caching function. Primary usage of squid.
Negative comment•
1

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5 of 6 comments
TinyProxy
Do you think this is a good alternative?
Yes
No
Free • Open Source
Linux
27 alternatives to TinyProxy
Tinyproxy is a light-weight HTTP/HTTPS proxy daemon for POSIX operating systems. It is free software, and supports transparent and reverse proxying.
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TinyProxy Features
Cascade proxy
hBlock
Do you think this is a good alternative?
Yes
No
Free • Open Source
Ad Blocker
Mac
Linux
BSD
Homebrew
30 alternatives to hBlock
hBlock is a POSIX-compliant shell script, designed for Unix-like systems, that gets a list of domains that serve ads, tracking scripts and malware from multiple sources and creates a hosts file (alternative formats are also supported) that prevents your system from connecting to...
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hBlock Features
1. Ad-freehBlock doesn't contain any form of external advertising.
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Proxomitron
Do you think this is a good alternative?
Yes
No
Free • Proprietary
Windows
21 alternatives to Proxomitron
For those who have not yet been introduced, meet the Proxomitron: a free, highly flexible, user-configurable, small but very powerful, local HTTP web-filtering proxy.
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Proxomitron Features
1. Support for scriptingProxomitron supports scripts and macros to automate or customize tasks.
Discontinued
Last version, 4.5, released on June 2003, is still downloadable from the official website
Apache Traffic Server
Do you think this is a good alternative?
Yes
No
Free • Open Source
Mac
Linux
Self-Hosted
FreeBSD
19 alternatives to Apache Traffic Server
Formerly a commercial product, Yahoo! donated it to the Apache Foundation, and it is now an Apache TLP.
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Apache Traffic Server Features
Load balancing
HTTPS Support
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Apache Traffic Server vs Squid opinions
pros, cons and recent comments
Guest
ATS has an event driven architecture where as Squid runs single-threaded. ATS scales much better than Squid.
Positive comment•
-2
Polipo
Do you think this is a good alternative?
Yes
No
Free • Open Source
Ad Blocker
Windows
Linux
18 alternatives to Polipo
A small and fast caching web proxy (a web cache, an HTTP proxy, a proxy server). Polipo can be used in place of ad-filtering, privacy-enhancing proxies such as Junkbuster, Privoxy or WWWOFFLE. As Polipo has much more refined HTTP support, it doesnt impose the speed tax usually...

Polipo has no features, suggest some!
Discontinued
From the official website, "Polipo is obsolete. When it was first written, Polipo was probably the best HTTP proxy available. Since then, the web protocols have changed, and Polipo hasn't kept up — it has no support for HTTP/2.0 or the WebSocket protocol. Polipo will no longer be maintained."
Artica Proxy
Do you think this is a good alternative?
Yes
No
Free Personal • Open Source
Linux
9 alternatives to Artica Proxy
ARTICA Proxy is an enterprise grade security appliance : web filtering (w/o SSL decryption), DNS Filtering, bandwith optimisation, easy ACL management, users authentication on LDAP or Active Directory (NTLM/Kerberos), deployment tools (such as proxy.
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Artica Proxy Features
HTTP Proxy
Web filter
DNS Proxy
CacheGuard-OS
Do you think this is a good alternative?
Yes
No
Paid • Proprietary
Firewall
Anti-Malware App
Windows
VirtualBox
VMware vSphere Hypervisor
Microsoft Hyper-V Server
Proxmox Virtual Environment
134 alternatives to CacheGuard-OS
All CacheGuard products and services are focused on delivering secured and optimized Web contents to our clients. To achieve that goal we made CacheGuard OS which is our core product. Once installed on a virtual or hardware machine, CacheGuard OS turns it into a powerful Web...

CacheGuard-OS has no features, suggest some!
GlimmerBlocker
Do you think this is a good alternative?
Yes
No
Free • Open Source
Ad Blocker
Mac
Safari
54 alternatives to GlimmerBlocker
The problem with other ad-blockers for Safari is that they are implemented as awful hacks: as an InputManager and/or ApplicationEnhancer. This compromises the stability of Safari and very often create problems when Apple releases a new version of Safari.
Suggest and vote on features
GlimmerBlocker Features
Safari extension
System Proxy
Discontinued
The project seems to be no longer developed. Last version, 1.6.6, released in September 2015, can be still downloaded from the official website.