--- title: Charles Proxy Reviews meta_title: 'Charles Proxy Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 33 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Charles Proxy works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.3 review_count: 33 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-08-07' parent_category: name: DevOps url: https://www.g2.com/categories/devops --- # Charles Proxy Reviews **Vendor:** Xk72 **Category:** [Bug Tracking Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/bug-tracking) **Average Rating:** 4.3/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 33 ## About Charles Proxy Charles Proxy is a robust web debugging proxy application designed for Windows, macOS, and Linux platforms. It enables developers to monitor, analyze, and manipulate HTTP and HTTPS traffic between their computer and the internet. By acting as an intermediary, Charles captures all data exchanged between the client and server, including requests, responses, headers, and metadata. This comprehensive visibility facilitates efficient debugging and optimization of web applications, allowing developers to identify and resolve issues promptly. Key Features and Functionality: - SSL Proxying: Decrypt and inspect SSL-encrypted traffic to view secure requests and responses in plain text. - Bandwidth Throttling: Simulate various network conditions by controlling bandwidth and introducing latency, aiding in performance testing under different scenarios. - AJAX Debugging: Examine XML and JSON requests and responses, presented in a structured tree format for easy analysis. - AMF Support: Analyze Flash Remoting (AMF0 and AMF3) messages, beneficial for developers working with Adobe Flash. - Request Modification: Repeat and edit requests to test backend changes and different inputs without altering the client application. - Breakpoints: Intercept and modify requests or responses in real-time to test specific scenarios or troubleshoot issues. - Validation Tools: Validate recorded HTML, CSS, and RSS/Atom responses using the W3C validator to ensure compliance with web standards. Primary Value and Problem Solving: Charles Proxy addresses the challenge developers face in observing and understanding the data exchanged between their applications and servers. By providing a transparent view of all HTTP and HTTPS traffic, it simplifies the process of diagnosing and fixing issues related to network communication, performance bottlenecks, and security vulnerabilities. Its ability to simulate different network conditions and intercept encrypted traffic makes it an invaluable tool for ensuring web applications function correctly across various environments and scenarios. ## Charles Proxy Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users value the **fast deployment speed** of Charles Proxy, enhancing web page loading without needing dedicated servers. (1 reviews) - Users value the **efficiency** of Charles Proxy, enabling fast web page loading and optimal bandwidth usage. (1 reviews) - Users value the **flexibility** of Charles Proxy for easy installation and seamless LAN access without a dedicated server. (1 reviews) - Users value the **performance optimization** of Charles Proxy for efficient cache storage and direct LAN queries. (1 reviews) - Users value the **proxy management capabilities** of Charles Proxy, enabling seamless control and monitoring of network traffic. (1 reviews) - Security (1 reviews) - Speed (1 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users find the **difficult setup** a barrier, especially for new users managing extensive networks for the first time. (2 reviews) - Users find the **complex configuration** challenging, especially for new users aiming to enhance their systems. (1 reviews) - Users find the **complexity of configuration** to be challenging, especially for new users trying to enhance their system. (1 reviews) - Users often face **connectivity issues** with Charles Proxy, leading to delays and difficulties with network and VPN functionality. (1 reviews) - Users find the **intuitiveness lacking** , especially for new users attempting to configure extra functions easily. (1 reviews) - Slow Loading (1 reviews) ## Charles Proxy Reviews ### 1. Powerful Real-Time Network Debugging with Charles Proxy **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ravindra N. | SDET - 2, Oil & Energy, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 14, 2026 **What do you like best about Charles Proxy?** What I like most about Charles Proxy is its ability to inspect and debug network traffic in real time. It provides complete visibility into API requests and responses, which makes troubleshooting much faster during development and QA testing. Request and response inspection makes it easy to verify API behavior. SSL proxying allows encrypted HTTPS traffic to be analyzed. Breakpoints and request modification help test different scenarios without changing the application code. Bandwidth throttling is useful for simulating slow network conditions. Session recording helps reproduce and investigate issues consistently. The most valuable feature is the ability to intercept and modify requests on the fly. During API testing and debugging, this allows me to validate edge cases, simulate failures, and investigate issues without requiring backend changes, which saves a significant amount of time. **What do you dislike about Charles Proxy?** Initial SSL certificate setup can be confusing, especially for new users. Large amounts of network traffic can make sessions difficult to navigate. Finding specific requests in heavily used applications sometimes requires extensive filtering. The biggest challenge is the initial setup and configuration process. Once everything is configured, the tool works very well, but setting up SSL proxying across different devices and environments can take some time and troubleshooting. **What problems is Charles Proxy solving and how is that benefiting you?** Charles Proxy solves the problem of limited visibility into network communication between applications and backend services. Without a proxy tool, diagnosing API issues, request failures, or unexpected responses can be much more difficult. Provides complete visibility into HTTP and HTTPS requests and responses. Helps identify API errors, incorrect payloads, and backend issues quickly. Makes it easy to validate request headers, parameters, and response data. Allows simulation of different network conditions for testing. Supports request modification and replay for troubleshooting edge cases. As someone involved in QA and API testing, Charles Proxy significantly reduces the time required to investigate issues. Instead of relying only on application logs, I can see exactly what data is being sent and received, which makes root cause analysis much faster and more accurate. ### 2. Charles Proxy is a powerful debugging tool used for analyzing and manipulating network traffic **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gorinta M. | QA Engineer II, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 24, 2023 **What do you like best about Charles Proxy?** Charles Proxy's ability to intercept and inspect HTTP and HTTPS traffic allows users to view and modify requests and responses for detailed analysis and troubleshooting. **What do you dislike about Charles Proxy?** While working with Charles, I faced an internet connectivity issue a couple of times. i need to restart my system sometimes. This makes little choosy for customers to choose Charles and to use. And also, it has a learning curve and can be complex for inexperienced users to navigate, especially when dealing with advanced features and configurations **What problems is Charles Proxy solving and how is that benefiting you?** With Charles, we can able to intercept and inspect the requests triggering when we interact with the application functionalities, and also we can make sure the application is working fine by verifying the requests triggered in Charles. We can also see how system reacts with some customized requests ### 3. My goto tool for HTTP traffic monitoring **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 09, 2023 **What do you like best about Charles Proxy?** * Charles can decrypt and inspect SSL/TLS encrypted traffic, even for secure HTTPS connections. * Charles enables you to modify HTTP requests and responses on the fly. You can edit request and response headers, change parameters, or even change the content of a response. * Websocket support **What do you dislike about Charles Proxy?** * Charles Proxy is a commercial tool and is not available for free. * Since Charles Proxy intercepts and analyses network traffic, it introduces an additional layer in the communication flow. **What problems is Charles Proxy solving and how is that benefiting you?** Helps me monitor https communication done by an in-house web application. We do performance enhancements based on the network calls (see which network call is taking how much time and remove/replace network calls as necessary). ### 4. Cache Storage Proxy Server **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Carlos C. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 16, 2023 **What do you like best about Charles Proxy?** Cache storage without needing a dedicated server, install on my Windows OS and store on my storage disk and all query directly over LAN. Functions of prohibiting access, URL control and connected users. **What do you dislike about Charles Proxy?** It is necessary to improve the configuration of extra functions, more intuitive to install on PCs of new users who wish to improve their system. **What problems is Charles Proxy solving and how is that benefiting you?** Save bandwidth of my PC Internet connected in office, load web faster and prohibit access to URL from a PC. Filter all content and measure traffic for performance improvement. ### 5. Loading Web Browser **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Hector L. | Security Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 10, 2021 **What do you like best about Charles Proxy?** I like the system integration, it loads stored web page memory and it is compatible with Linux and Windows. **What do you dislike about Charles Proxy?** I don't like to integrate system with VPN Internet security. **Recommendations to others considering Charles Proxy:** Use in personal PC, Internet control, Internet access and faster loading web page. **What problems is Charles Proxy solving and how is that benefiting you?** Automatic loading from PC cache memory, I store 35% of web page and save Internet bandwidth. ### 6. Useful tool **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Entertainment | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 19, 2020 **What do you like best about Charles Proxy?** It allows you to intercept and change requests, so you can test your client without changing data on the backend **What do you dislike about Charles Proxy?** Not free. I'd love it to have some basic free version **What problems is Charles Proxy solving and how is that benefiting you?** if I'm testing mobile app, there might be a lot of scenarios where you need different data from the backend. With Charles, you can intercept requests and change them to test different scenarios without spending time/effort on actually manipulating backend data ### 7. Used for API Testing, BE responses and FE request **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Luis P. | QA Tester, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 02, 2019 **What do you like best about Charles Proxy?** It is easy to use, make mobile testing a better experience. API responses and request can be tested at the same time with Front End. I was happy I could test API just together with FE. It can be connected to iOS and Android. You even have the chance to use it for free. **What do you dislike about Charles Proxy?** it should be available in other languages. Also it is not possible to use for Android devices that work with Operational Software bellow 6. Maybe it is not possible the implementation and well not much people is using Android 5 anymore but it would be nice. **Recommendations to others considering Charles Proxy:** It can be a bit difficult the first time to use but after all fields are correctly adjusted for your necessities everything is gonna be easy and helpful. **What problems is Charles Proxy solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is necessary for the API testing. It helped me to analyze the BE responses and I could check when I got some BE issues. One of the member of my QA team showed me how to work with Charles and after the first day I could be independent. ### 8. Charles Is A Keeper **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alex T. | CPO, Design, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 28, 2019 **What do you like best about Charles Proxy?** Charles proxy was easy to install, and easy to use once I got the hang of it. I always used web based proxies, so this was a little different but once I got the settings right, all was smooth sailing. **What do you dislike about Charles Proxy?** Not much really. I dont have much experience with ACTUAL proxy software, all of my experience has been with a web based server, so I haven't noticed anything I dislike, because I have nothing to compare it to. . **Recommendations to others considering Charles Proxy:** If you need a proxy Charles works. I am still in the trial stages (I just started my own business so everything is still getting worked out) but I will continue to look at other proxies for aesthetics (I am a girl lol) and just to stay on top of the game as much as I can in terms of knowledge base. But this solved my problems in the short term & may end up keeping it. **What problems is Charles Proxy solving and how is that benefiting you?** Anonymity ... Its nice to be able to browse with out the weird pop up things I used to get without it. And weird wifi interruptions. Never thought about that one. ### 9. Fantastic Proxy + Much More **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Matthew J. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 21, 2020 **What do you like best about Charles Proxy?** The ability to decrypt proxied SSL traffic and throttle connections to test for slow networks. **What do you dislike about Charles Proxy?** Requires a lot of disk space, there is no built-in testing suite. **Recommendations to others considering Charles Proxy:** There are lots of tutorials on the internet showing how to do different things with Charles proxy, I recommend viewing them to help get started. **What problems is Charles Proxy solving and how is that benefiting you?** Being able to proxy traffic and see what is being transferred over a mobile app or other connection is valuable. ### 10. Speed and security from web browser. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Virginia T. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 25, 2020 **What do you like best about Charles Proxy?** I like the easy integration into the browser, it is fast and secure without the need for an external server or network configuration. The diagnosis helps me to review all errors and solve quickly. Compatibility with Windows and Linux. **What do you dislike about Charles Proxy?** When I connect my Internet with VPN security the connection fails and is slow. **Recommendations to others considering Charles Proxy:** I recommend this system for the ease of use, it is fast to the web browser. **What problems is Charles Proxy solving and how is that benefiting you?** I give security to my connection in HTTP pages and loading speed. ### 11. Don’t know how I’d do my job without Charles **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Addison F. | iOS Engineer I, Computer Software, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 20, 2019 **What do you like best about Charles Proxy?** Charles enables me to have deep and easy to access insights into the data I’m working with. I use it regularly when debugging iOS applications. **What do you dislike about Charles Proxy?** Searching for keywords can be a bit finicky with XML responses. I wish it worked as well as the search functionality for JSON objects. **Recommendations to others considering Charles Proxy:** This is the tool you’re looking for. We’ve yet to find a better solution. **What problems is Charles Proxy solving and how is that benefiting you?** Validating data transfer between server and client applications. We used to build our own network sniffers for debugging traffic but Charles makes it incredibly easy. I especially love the benefit of setting breakpoints and being able to edit request/response data in transit. ### 12. This is the standard for debugging network communication **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Printing | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 24, 2019 **What do you like best about Charles Proxy?** This is one of those tools where you ask yourself how you could ever do your job before you had it. It makes debugging network communication so much easier, and it also helps in inspecting what communication takes place to begin with. **What do you dislike about Charles Proxy?** The only thing I "dislike" is the "shareware" aspect of it, with the nag screens etc. if you haven't bought it. **What problems is Charles Proxy solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have used Charles to debug netowrk communications between services. It has exposed problems that would have been difficult to understand otherwise ### 13. Helpful debugging tool **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 26, 2019 **What do you like best about Charles Proxy?** Able to easily see what network calls are made **What do you dislike about Charles Proxy?** Free version can be a bit annoying with certain limitations **What problems is Charles Proxy solving and how is that benefiting you?** Discovering what API calls are made when interacting with our web application ### 14. Great tools for viewing TCP/HTTP packet requests and responses **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Louloua J. | Test Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 17, 2019 **What do you like best about Charles Proxy?** Love how easy it is to setup and start debugging. Helps in crucial of times when its hard to understand communication between devices **What do you dislike about Charles Proxy?** there doesnt seem like there is any easy way to filter headers. Also, the fact that the information cannot be copied over to text or notepad. **What problems is Charles Proxy solving and how is that benefiting you?** Its easy to debug what information is being sent between devices. Easy to snoop requests and responses between iPads and other supported third party devices. ### 15. Very robust tool but overly complex for non-technical users **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Internet | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 18, 2019 **What do you like best about Charles Proxy?** Once setup and working, it's an extremely helpful way to swap out files. **What do you dislike about Charles Proxy?** It requires a good deal of setup. Getting the SSH tokens up and working requires a technical background or a well documented implementation guide. **What problems is Charles Proxy solving and how is that benefiting you?** I work in tag management with Tealium and Charles was one of the ways we tested changes we were making. We'd swap out a file delivered by Tealium with something local on our machines. ## Charles Proxy Discussions - [Is Charles proxy open source?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-charles-proxy-open-source) - 1 comment - [View Charles Proxy pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/charles-proxy/reviews?filters%5Bnps_score%5D%5B%5D=4§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-12+12%3A23%3A21+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=594b6736-dedc-4673-adee-4c8d767c9ecb&secure%5Btoken%5D=a869d06b338a2a6470e7cb7f7245e2cad0699a6b19716765c580c4f77db58493&format=llm_user) ## Charles Proxy Features **Bug Reporting** - User Reports & Feedback - Tester Reports & Feedback - Team Reports & Comments **Bug Monitoring** - Analytics - Bug History - Data Retention **Agentic AI - Bug Tracking** - Adaptive Learning - Natural Language Interaction - Proactive Assistance - Assignment Management - Prioritization **Additional Functionality** - API - Audit Trail - Drag & Drop - Projections - Charting - Ticket Management - Monitoring - Status Tracking - Progress Tracking - Workflow Management - Project Time Tracking - Issue Tracking - Configurable Workflow - Collaboration Tools - Agile Methodologies - Customizable Fields - Backlog Management - Real-Time Updates - Single Sign On - Generative AI - Task Scheduling - Activity Tracking - Activity Dashboard - Task Management - Project Management - Project Planning - Feedback Management - Code Repository Integration - Reporting & Statistics - Email Management - Knowledge Base Management - Multiple Projects - Tagging - AI Copilot - File Management - Issue Management - Task Planning - Data Visualization - Bug/Issue Capture - Bug Tracking - Alerts/Notifications - Commenting/Notes - @mentions - Third-Party Integrations - Customizable Templates - Task Progress Tracking - Real-Time Notifications - Access Controls/Permissions ## Top Charles Proxy Alternatives - [Jira](https://www.g2.com/products/jira/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (7,571 reviews) - [GitLab](https://www.g2.com/products/gitlab/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (885 reviews) - [GitHub](https://www.g2.com/products/github/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (2,334 reviews)