Faster Connections, Reliable Access: Introducing HTTP/3 Protocol Support

When you're scraping the web at scale, two things matter most: how fast you connect, and how reliably your requests reach the target. The protocols most proxies use today are starting to fall short on both – they're slower than they should be, and may no longer align with how modern browsers connect to today’s websites. Modern web infrastructures aren't just looking at IP addresses anymore. They're looking at how you connect. 

That's why we're rolling out HTTP/3 protocol support for Residential Proxies and Mobile Proxies. Standard HTTP/HTTPS proxy endpoints are not compatible with HTTP/3, so to proxy requests, you need to use a SOCKS5 proxy with UDP traffic support, available through the following dedicated endpoint:

socks.pr.oxylabs.io:7777

Most common tools do not natively support HTTP/3 over SOCKS5 with UDP associate support, so custom implementations may be required, such as our custom HTTP/3 Go solution GitHub repository.

Note: Make sure your firewall allows UDP traffic on the required ports, as many ports block UDP by default.

If you were not familiar with HTTP/3 protocol support before, let’s get you started with it.

What is HTTP/3?

HTTP/3 is the latest version of the protocol that powers the web. Unlike HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2, which run over TCP, HTTP/3 uses QUIC – a newer transport built on UDP. 

QUIC was designed to fix the problems that have slowed TCP-based connections for years: slow handshakes, head-of-line blocking, and poor recovery from packet loss on unstable networks.

For proxy users, this means two practical things:

• Connection setup is faster. QUIC combines the transport handshake and TLS negotiation into fewer round trips, so requests start moving sooner.

• Performance holds up better on lossy networks. Streams are independent, so a single dropped packet doesn't stall the whole connection.

Why HTTP/3 matters in the proxy market right now

A few years ago, supporting HTTP/2 was enough. That window has closed. Major browsers, CDNs, and the websites you actually want to scrape have moved to HTTP/3 by default – and anti-bot systems have noticed.

Here's the problem: when a connection can only speak HTTP/2 against a target that supports HTTP/3, that gap stands out. A protocol fingerprint that doesn't match what real browsers use is starting to look non-human, and that gap is being treated as a soft signal of automation. Over time, this means more challenges, more CAPTCHAs, and more outright blocks for traffic that has no other way to negotiate.

HTTP/3 support has quickly moved from advanced feature to baseline expectation in the proxy industry. Providers without it will fall behind. At Oxylabs, our job is to optimize and maintain your scraping projects without interruption, and HTTP/3 is part of how we do that.

What you get with HTTP/3 on both Residential and Mobile Proxies

• Higher success rates. Match the protocol fingerprint that modern websites associate with legitimate browser traffic, and reduce the number of requests that get challenged or blocked outright.

• Faster connections. Lower handshake overhead and better behavior on unstable networks mean requests complete sooner – especially useful at scale, where small per-request savings add up fast.

• Flexible protocol options. HTTP/3 is offered alongside HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS5. Pick the protocol that fits your workflow without changing the rest of your setup.

How to get started

HTTP/3 is now available across the entire Residential Proxies and Mobile Proxies pool. If you're already an Oxylabs customer, you can route traffic over HTTP/3 by updating your endpoint configuration. Find detailed integration steps from our dedicated GitHub repository on HTTP/3 via SOCKS5 with UDP associate support. 

New to Oxylabs? You can start your Residential Proxies and Mobile Proxies plans today and test HTTP/3 against your target sites from the very first request.