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Here's the short version: when you visit a website, you're not always talking to it directly. A lot of the time, there's a go-between sitting in front of the site, quietly taking your request and handing the site's response back to you. That go-between is often a reverse proxy.
So what is a reverse proxy, really? How does it work, and how is it different from the regular proxy or VPN you might already use? This guide covers all of it in plain terms. (If you're actually here to protect your own privacy, a proxy or VPN is more your speed, and our roundup of the best VPN services is a better place to start.)
Here’s what you need to know about reverse proxies.
A reverse proxy is a server that sits in front of one or more websites and manages the traffic coming to them. Basically, it acts as an intermediary between the wild world of the internet and one or more website servers it’s configured to manage. Instead of reaching a site's server directly, your request goes to the reverse proxy first, and it passes that request along to whichever server actually hosts the site.
Think of it like a receptionist at an office. You don't walk straight back to someone's desk. You tell the receptionist who you're trying to reach, and they send you to the right place. The people doing the work stay out of sight, and you only ever deal with the front desk.
That's the whole idea. A reverse proxy is the front desk for a website, and the servers doing the real work sit behind it.
You may have used a forward proxy before, which is the mirror image: it sits in front of you, the user, and passes your traffic out to the internet. Going along with the same analogy, a forward proxy is more like a personal assistant who makes calls or picks things up for you, so the outside world deals with the assistant instead of you directly. On the other hand, a reverse proxy sits in front of the website instead.
But I'll come back to that difference in a minute.
Say you type a website's address into your browser. Thanks to DNS, that address actually points to the reverse proxy rather than the site's own server, so your request goes there first. The reverse proxy reads where you're headed and forwards your request to the server that hosts the site. When that server responds, the reverse proxy hands the answer back to you.
From your side, nothing looks different. The page loads like normal. Behind the scenes, though, you never connect to the site's real server, and you never see its IP address. Your device only ever talks to the reverse proxy.
| Step | What happens |
| 1. You make a request | You type a site's address or click a link. DNS points that address to the reverse proxy, not the site's own server. |
| 2. The reverse proxy receives it | Your request lands on the reverse proxy first, and it reads where you're trying to go. |
| 3. It routes you to a server | The reverse proxy forwards your request to the origin server that hosts the site, or the least busy one if there are several. |
| 4. The server responds | The origin server sends the page back to the reverse proxy, not straight to you. |
| 5. You get the page | The reverse proxy passes the response to your browser. The page loads normally, and you never touch the origin server directly. |
This way of handling network requests offers a wealth of benefits. Because every request funnels through that one point, the reverse proxy can do more than pass messages along. It can pick which server should answer when a site runs on several, keep copies of pages on hand to load them faster, and screen incoming traffic for anything malicious before it reaches the site. More on this in the next section.
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What does a reverse proxy even do, exactly? Here are the top 6 functions of a reverse proxy:
To keep it simple: a reverse proxy handles requests coming into a website (inbound), while a forward proxy sends your requests out to the internet on your behalf (outbound).
Forward proxies (or just “proxies”) happen on your end, on your device. So do virtual private networks (VPNs). Reverse proxies happen on the other end of the connection, on the remote server.
To be more specific, a forward proxy routes traffic for your device (or a single app) through a remote server to mask your IP address or get around certain network restrictions.
A VPN is a lot like a proxy, but it also encrypts all traffic sent to and from the server through which your internet traffic is being routed. They’re both useful security tools for both consumers and businesses, and you’ll find a lot of people using them in those contexts.
As mentioned above, a reverse proxy sits on a remote server and redirects the server traffic according to how it was set up. The proxy does all of its work behind the scenes.
To recap: A reverse proxy is a sort of middleman that sits on remote servers and redirects all incoming traffic as needed. They can improve site performance, increase security, and generally make life a little easier for both the end user and the system administrator. And, unless you’re learning how to host your own websites and apps, they’re not something you ever need to worry about.
They differ from forward proxies and VPNs in that a reverse proxy operates at the other end of your connection to a remote server, not on your device. It’s really that simple.
A forward proxy (or just “a proxy”), in a networking context, reroutes your internet traffic, or the traffic for a single app, through a server of your choice. This masks your IP address and can help solve a variety of networking issues or get around certain network restrictions.
A reverse proxy sits on a remote server and redirects all traffic that comes to that server to a specific app or website, depending on how it’s configured.
Reverse proxies handle a few key jobs. The most common is load balancing: the website you’re browsing may be hosted across multiple servers, and a reverse proxy can direct users to whichever server is experiencing less traffic at the moment, preventing overloading any one server. They also cache pages to load them faster, hide the origin server's IP address to limit hacking attempts, and can route several sites hosted on one server to the right place. See the full list above for the rest.
A reverse proxy can also be used when multiple websites or apps are on the same server, each with its own domain. The reverse proxy checks which domain name was used to access the server, and directs the user to the correct website accordingly.
Nope, a reverse proxy is not at all the same as a VPN. A reverse proxy manages traffic coming into a website's servers, while a VPN reroutes all of your internet traffic through a server you choose and encrypts it along the way.
A VPN’s main uses are to add an extra layer of security to your internet connection, mask your IP address, or (in some cases) allow you to access networks that are normally locked to the public.
For you, the user at home? Yes, reverse proxies are generally safe. A properly configured reverse proxy can actually increase security for the websites and apps “behind” it. However, a misconfigured reverse proxy can have security holes that leave the sites behind it vulnerable.
Unless you set one up on your own home network for some reason (most people will never have reason to do this) and do it wrong, reverse proxies are not going to be a problem for you.
Yes. Cloudflare is one of the best-known examples of a reverse proxy in action. It's mainly a content delivery network and security service, but the way it works is by sitting in front of a website and routing traffic through its own servers first, which is exactly what a reverse proxy does. That's how it caches pages to load them faster and screens out malicious traffic before it reaches the site's origin server.
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