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Proxies not working? Go through this checklist in order

Most “not working” cases are one of four things: the IP your tool connects from isn’t in Authorized IPs, you tried it before the 15-minute wait was over, you run more connections than your plan has threads, or the proxy URL starts with https://. Check them in that order. If pages load but the site shows a CAPTCHA or 403, the proxy works and the site is pushing back.

Updated October 2026Fix proxy errors

You paid, copied a gateway into your tool, and nothing happens. Or it worked yesterday and today every request fails. “Not working” is the most common reason people ask us for a refund, and it’s rarely a broken proxy. Usually the gateway is up and doing exactly what it was told: refusing a machine it doesn’t recognise, or dropping connections above the plan’s limit.

The fastest way out is to stop guessing and read the symptom. A reset, a refusal, a 407, a timeout and a CAPTCHA each point to a different cause, and each takes a minute to confirm. The list below runs from the most likely cause to the least, so you’ll usually find yours in the first three steps.

Work through it top to bottom. Each step says how to check and how to fix. If you get to the end and it still fails, the last step tells you exactly what to send support so we can answer in one reply instead of five.

Which Storm plan fits

This checklist works for every plan. If the real problem turns out to be the job, not the setup, switch products instead of fighting it: rotating proxies on the Main gateway for high-volume page fetching and search engines, residential ports for strict retail sites that refuse datacenter IPs, and private dedicated proxies with username and password when your tool runs on cloud servers whose IP keeps changing. Plan changes are one click in the member area, and the unused part of your current plan is credited.

Rotating proxies (from $14/mo): 700,000+ IPs behind fixed gateway IP:PORTs. New IP on every request, or every 3 or 15 minutes. USA, EU, USA+EU or Worldwide. Unlimited bandwidth on every plan.

Get 40 threads for $39/mo See all rotating proxies plans

Before you start

Log in to the member area and copy your gateway IP:PORTs. They never change; the rotation happens on our side.
Add the public IP of the computer or server that will run your tool under Authorized IPs, click Save, and allow up to 15 minutes before testing. Rotating and residential proxies use IP authentication, so there is no username or password.
Dedicated proxies work with either IP authentication or a username and password. Use user:pass if your IP changes or the tool runs on several machines.
Count your threads: the tool’s total open connections must stay within your plan (for example 40 threads on the 40-thread plan).

On this page

The checklist, most likely cause first
Two-minute diagnostic
What each symptom tells you
Where your tool really runs
What “working” should look like
Pick the plan that fits the job: worked examples
Common errors and fixes
FAQ

The checklist, most likely cause first

Write down the exact symptom
Before changing anything, run one request and copy the exact message. Connection reset (“Recv failure”, ConnectionResetError, “Connection aborted”) points to authorization. Connection refused means wrong IP or port, or a firewall. 407 means a username or password problem, which on Storm only applies to dedicated proxies. Timeouts usually mean too many threads. A page that loads with a CAPTCHA, 403 or 429 means the proxy works and the target site is the problem. Jump to the step that matches.
Authorize the IP your tool really connects from
Rotating and residential plans have no password: the gateway lets in only the IPs saved under Authorized IPs in the member area. On the machine that runs the tool (not your laptop, if the tool runs on a server), open https://api.ipify.org or run curl https://api.ipify.org. That service answers over IPv4, which is what you want to compare. If the number differs from the one you saved, save the new one. A VPN, a phone hotspot or a different office network all change it. Residential packages take one authorized IP.
Wait the full 15 minutes after saving
A new or changed authorized IP can take up to 15 minutes to reach every gateway. Resets at minute two are normal. Save once, wait 15 minutes, then test.
Recopy the gateway and fix the scheme
Copy the gateway IP:PORT again from the member area rather than from an old note. Make sure it sits in the HTTP or HTTPS proxy field, not SOCKS: Storm gateways are HTTP(S) proxies with no SOCKS support. In code, the proxy URL starts with http:// even for https:// websites. An https:// proxy URL is a common cause of SSL errors and “wrong version number”.
Count every open connection against your threads
Your thread limit is per plan, not per tool. Add up the scraper’s concurrency, every browser tab (around 10 threads each) and any second machine on the same plan. Over the limit, extra connections fail while the rest succeed, so the errors look random. Halve your concurrency: if the errors stop, this was it. The threads guide has the math.
Check that the gateway matches the job
On rotating plans, the Main gateway gives a new IP per connection, the 3-minute and 15-minute gateways hold one IP for that long. A login that keeps logging you out is usually on Main; move it to a timed gateway. Search engine scraping belongs on Main, never on the 3-minute gateway. On residential, the IP changes every 5 minutes at minute 1, 6, 11 and so on, and open connections can drop at that moment, so a failure exactly on that clock is rotation, not an outage.
Make sure the tool doesn’t run somewhere with a changing IP
Cloud tools, serverless functions, many CI runners, hosted notebooks and apps that fetch pages from their own servers connect from IPs you can’t predict or authorize. IP authorization can’t work there. Run the job on a VPS with a fixed IP and authorize that IP, or use private dedicated proxies with username and password.
Separate “proxy fails” from “site blocks”
Load https://httpbin.org/ip through the gateway. If it shows a proxy IP, the proxy works. If your target then answers with a CAPTCHA, a 403 or a 429, the fix is pacing, headers and IP type, not setup. See CAPTCHAs with proxies, 403 Forbidden and 429 Too Many Requests.
Still stuck? Send support five facts
Write to us through the contact page with: your username, the gateway you use (IP:PORT), the target site, your software, and the exact error or the output of the curl test below. With those five we can see the problem in your account instead of asking questions.

Two-minute diagnostic

Run these on the machine that runs your tool. Replace GATEWAY_IP:PORT with a gateway from your member area. The curl output is also the most useful thing you can paste into a support message.

macOS / Linux: your IP, then the gateway

# 1. The IPv4 address to put in Authorized IPs
curl -s https://api.ipify.org; echo

# 2. A request through the gateway, with the conversation shown
curl -v -x http://GATEWAY_IP:PORT https://httpbin.org/ip --max-time 30

# Read the result:
#   {"origin": "<proxy IP>"}           -> proxy works
#   Recv failure: Connection reset     -> IP not authorized yet (or < 15 min)
#   Failed to connect ... refused      -> wrong IP/port or firewall
#   CONNECT tunnel failed, response 407 -> credentials (dedicated) or another proxy
#   Operation timed out                -> too many threads, or a network block

Windows PowerShell

# Your public IPv4
(Invoke-WebRequest -UseBasicParsing https://api.ipify.org).Content

# Can this PC reach the gateway port at all?
Test-NetConnection GATEWAY_IP -Port PORT

# Full request through the proxy (curl ships with Windows 10 and 11)
curl.exe -v -x http://GATEWAY_IP:PORT https://httpbin.org/ip --max-time 30

What each symptom tells you

Storm’s rotating and residential gateways behave in a specific way when something is wrong, and knowing it saves hours:

Reset after connecting. The gateway accepted the TCP connection, didn’t recognise your IP, and hung up. This happens for plain HTTP and for HTTPS tunnels alike. It is the signature of an unauthorized IP or a wait that isn’t over. You will not get a 407 for this.
Refused. Nothing answered at that address and port. A typo, a port from a plan you no longer have, or a firewall (corporate networks often block unusual outgoing ports). Authorization never causes a refusal.
407 Proxy Authentication Required. Only private dedicated proxies use a username and password, so a 407 means the credentials or their encoding are wrong. On rotating or residential, a 407 comes from some other proxy your system or tool is also using. More in the 407 guide.
Timeouts and random failures under load. Usually the thread limit: the first N connections work and the rest are dropped.
Real IP shows up. The tool isn’t using the proxy at all. Check the tool’s own setting, not just the system one.

Where your tool really runs

The gateway checks the public IP of whichever machine opens the connection. That trips people up in a few predictable ways:

Home connections with a changing IP. Your provider gives you a new address every few days and the proxies “stop working” overnight. Set up a free dynamic DNS hostname (No-IP or similar) on your router or PC and authorize the hostname instead of the raw IP.
VPN on and off. With a VPN on, your public IP is the VPN’s. Authorize the address you’ll actually use, or turn the VPN off.
Tool on a server, test on a laptop. The laptop works because you authorized it; the server fails because you didn’t. Authorize both.

The IP authentication guide walks through each case.

What “working” should look like

Test in three layers, in this order, and stop at the first one that fails:

Reachability. Test-NetConnection or nc -vz GATEWAY_IP PORT succeeds. If not, it’s the address or a firewall.
Proxy. https://httpbin.org/ip through the gateway returns an IP that isn’t yours. On the Main gateway, two runs a few seconds apart show different IPs.
Target. Your real site loads. If layer 2 passes and this fails, the site is reacting to your traffic. That’s a scraping-practice problem with its own fixes, not a broken proxy.

ScrapeBox users: its built-in proxy checker isn’t compatible with our gateway and will report good proxies as dead. Test in a browser or with curl instead. The proxies still work for harvesting; see the ScrapeBox guide.

Pick the plan that fits the job: worked examples

Sometimes the setup is right and the plan is wrong. A few common cases:

One browser and nothing else on the 10-thread package. One tab uses about 10 threads, so a second tab or a background scraper pushes you over. The 10-thread package is for testing. For two or three tabs plus a light script, 40 threads ($39/mo) leaves room.
Google scraping on 40 threads. Use the Main gateway and at most 10 threads for Google (the 25% rule). The other 30 can go to ordinary sites. For 20 Google threads you need the 80-thread plan.
Retail sites keep answering with CAPTCHAs on datacenter IPs. Move those jobs to residential ports: 5 ports ($50/mo) give 5 home IPs at once, each up to 50 threads. Keep the rest on rotating proxies.
Scraper in a cloud function. IP authorization can’t follow it. Dedicated proxies with username and password, from 5 for $10/mo, work from anywhere.

Upgrading or moving to a smaller plan is one click in the member area; the unused part of the old plan is credited and the old plan stops on its own.

Common errors and fixes

curl: (56) Recv failure: Connection reset by peerThe gateway doesn’t recognise your IP yet. Compare curl https://api.ipify.org with Authorized IPs, save the right one and wait up to 15 minutes.

curl: (7) Failed to connect ... Connection refusedWrong gateway IP or port, or a firewall blocking the port. Recopy the gateway from the member area and try from another network to rule out the firewall.

Python: ProxyError ... RemoteDisconnected('Remote end closed connection without response')Same as a reset: authorization. On residential, it can also be a connection open across a 5-minute rotation; retry on a new connection.

Chrome: ERR_PROXY_CONNECTION_FAILED or ERR_TUNNEL_CONNECTION_FAILEDThe browser couldn’t use the proxy. Follow the ERR_PROXY_CONNECTION_FAILED or tunnel checklist.

Worked yesterday, fails today, nothing changedYour home or office IP changed. Check it, update Authorized IPs, or authorize a dynamic DNS hostname so it follows you.

Page loads but shows a CAPTCHA, “Access denied” or 403The proxy is working; the site is reacting to the traffic. Slow down, use realistic headers, and use residential ports for strict sites.

FAQ

Why do my Storm proxies say “connection reset” instead of asking for a password?

Rotating and residential gateways don’t use passwords. When a connection comes from an IP that isn’t authorized, the gateway accepts it and then resets it. It never answers with a 407. Add the IP of the machine running your tool under Authorized IPs and wait up to 15 minutes.

How long after adding my IP do Storm proxies start working?

Up to 15 minutes. Test once after that. If it still resets, the IP you saved isn’t the one the gateway sees; check it from the machine that runs the tool.

Can I use rotating or residential proxies with a username and password instead?

No. Those plans use IP authorization only. If your IP changes all the time, authorize a dynamic DNS hostname, run the job on a fixed-IP server, or use private dedicated proxies, which accept username:password.

The proxy shows a new IP, but my site still blocks me. Is the proxy broken?

No, that means it works. Blocks, CAPTCHAs and 403s are the site’s decision based on your request rate, headers and IP type. Pace requests per site and move strict targets to residential ports.

Do I get my money back if I can’t get them working?

Storm offers a 24-hour money-back guarantee on the smallest package of each proxy type, first order only. Larger packages aren’t refundable, which is why it pays to run this checklist and contact support early: most setups work after the authorized IP is fixed. The full terms are in the refund policy.

Still have questions? Contact us here. A real person answers.

Tool facts checked against the official documentation (October 2026): curl man page · Microsoft: Test-NetConnection · Requests docs: Proxies · ipify API. Storm Proxies facts: our plans page and refund policy.

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