WHAT IS MY
USER AGENT?
The identification string your browser attaches to every request it makes — read from your own request to this page, decoded below. Nothing is stored, and no third-party service sees it.
Your user agent string
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)
WHAT IT SAYS
- Rendering engine
- WebKit / Blink
- Reports as mobile
- No
Decoded from the string itself, which is why it is a reading rather than a fact — the string is set by the client and can say anything.
CLIENT HINTS AND RELATED HEADERS
- Sec-CH-UA
- not sent
Browser brands and major versions
- Sec-CH-UA-Platform
- not sent
Operating system
- Sec-CH-UA-Mobile
- not sent
Whether the browser reports as mobile
- Accept-Language
- not sent
Languages your browser asks for
- Accept-Encoding
- gzip, br
Compression formats accepted
SET IT FROM
YOUR CODE
The user agent is a header you control, so setting it takes one flag in any HTTP client. What it will not do on its own is make an automated request look like a browser — see below for why.
# what you are sending right now
curl "https://proxeasy.net/api/ip"
# with a browser string instead
curl -A "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) Chrome/120.0.0.0" \
"https://proxeasy.net/api/ip"
# the response echoes the userAgent it receivedA USER AGENT IS A CLAIM,
NOT A FACT
Because the client sets it, no site treats a user agent as evidence on its own. It is compared against everything else the request carries, and a contradiction between any two of these is a far stronger signal than the string itself. This is why swapping in a browser user agent and seeing no change is such a common experience.
- TLS fingerprint
- The shape of your TLS handshake identifies the library that made it. A Python client claiming Chrome is visible at the first packet, before a single header is read.
- Header order
- Browsers send headers in a consistent order that HTTP libraries do not reproduce. The order is checked as often as the contents.
- Client Hints
- A Chromium browser sends Sec-CH-UA headers alongside its user agent. Claiming Chrome without them is a contradiction.
- IP reputation
- A residential or carrier-assigned address is consistent with a consumer browser. A datacenter range claiming a mobile Safari string is not.
- Timezone and language
- A browser reporting US English from an exit in Frankfurt invites a closer look, whatever the user agent says.
The practical consequence: consistency beats disguise. A plain, honest user agent on a well-reputed IP is treated better than an elaborate spoof that contradicts itself. Check what your IP and headers reveal for the other half of the picture.
Which address you arrive from is the half of that you choose. Residential proxies route through an IP a home internet provider assigned to a real household, and 4G mobile proxies through a dedicated IP on a real carrier network — either one lets an ordinary browser user agent agree with the exit it arrives from instead of contradicting it. Still weighing providers? Our proxy provider comparisons cover billing model, minimum commitment and access approval.
USER AGENT
QUESTIONS
- What is my user agent?
- It is the line above — the identification string your browser attaches to every request it makes. It names the browser, its version and the operating system, and every site you visit reads it before deciding what to send back. Nothing about it is secret; it is transmitted in plain text as an ordinary HTTP header.
- What is a user agent string?
- A user agent string is an HTTP request header that identifies the client making the request. A typical browser string looks like Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/120.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 — a chain of product tokens accumulated for compatibility reasons over three decades. Almost every browser still begins with "Mozilla/5.0" for reasons that stopped being technically meaningful in the 1990s.
- Can I change my user agent?
- Yes, trivially. It is a header the client sets, so any browser devtools panel, extension or HTTP library can send whatever you like — curl -A "custom-string" is enough. That is exactly why a user agent alone is weak evidence of anything: it is self-reported, and the server has no way to verify it in isolation.
- Why does my scraper get blocked even with a real browser user agent?
- Because the user agent is checked against everything else the request reveals, not read on its own. Claiming Chrome on Windows while your TLS handshake matches a Python library, your header order is wrong, your Accept-Language is missing and your IP belongs to a datacenter range is a set of contradictions. Anti-bot systems score the combination. Fixing the user agent alone usually changes nothing, which is why swapping it and seeing no improvement is such a common experience.
- What are Client Hints, and are they replacing the user agent?
- Client Hints (the Sec-CH-UA family of headers) are a structured alternative that sends browser identity as separate, explicit fields instead of one long string. Chromium browsers send a reduced user agent alongside them, freezing much of the detail the old string used to carry. The classic user agent header still exists and still works — but the high-entropy detail is increasingly behind Client Hints, which is why two browsers can now report near-identical user agent strings.
- Does changing my user agent hide my identity?
- No, and treating it that way is the mistake worth avoiding. The user agent is one of many signals: your IP address and its reputation, TLS fingerprint, header ordering, timezone, language and screen metrics are all visible too. An unusual or inconsistent user agent makes you more distinctive, not less. If your goal is to look ordinary, consistency across all of those matters far more than the string itself.