WePROXA vs Proxyman vs Charles: Picking an HTTP Debugging Proxy
We make WePROXA, so read this as an interested comparison rather than a neutral one. Every price and limit below comes from the vendor’s own pricing or license page, checked on 12 September 2026. Where Charles or Proxyman is the better pick, this post says so.
All three tools do the same core job. They sit between your app and the network, decrypt HTTPS with a local certificate authority, and show you what was actually sent and returned. If all you need is to read traffic, any of them will do. The real differences are price, what the free tier lets you build, and how each app handles a debugging setup you want to reuse tomorrow.
Short answer
Section titled “Short answer”- Choose Charles if you work on Linux, or your team already has licenses and years of habits built around it.
- Choose Proxyman if you also capture from iOS or Android with their companion apps, if you need Linux, or if you want a team plan with cloud sharing.
- Choose WePROXA if you work on macOS or Windows, want the cheapest paid license, and want to save a whole debugging setup as a file you can commit next to the code it mocks.
Price and license
Section titled “Price and license”| WePROXA | Proxyman | Charles | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single license | $25 one time | $89 Standard, 1 device | $50 user license |
| Next tier up | Contact us for volume | $99 Personal, 2 devices plus 2 mobile seats | $400 site license, $700 multi-site |
| Team plan | Not offered yet | From $99 per seat per year, or $12 per seat per month billed yearly, minimum 5 seats | Volume discounts at 5 and 10 licenses |
| Updates included | 1 year | 1 year, then the version you have keeps working | All 5.x updates; the next major version costs 40% of the original price |
Charles sells the license per user and lets you run it on a second machine within reason. Proxyman counts devices per seat. A WePROXA Pro license is active on one machine at a time, and you move it by deactivating in Settings before activating elsewhere.
One number worth naming plainly: WePROXA Pro is $25 against $50 for Charles and $89 for Proxyman Standard. That is the whole reason a lot of people try it.
What you get without paying
Section titled “What you get without paying”This is where the three tools split most sharply, and it matters more than the sticker price. A free tier decides whether you can do real work before you buy.
Charles gives you a 30-day trial. After that the app still runs, but each session stops after 30 minutes and startup is slowed on purpose. It is a nag, not a free tier.
Proxyman’s trial limits you to 2 pinned domains, 2 rules for each debugging tool, and no new tabs. You can evaluate the tools, but you cannot build a real mock set.
WePROXA’s free tier is built for daily use. No time limit, no session cutoff, and the rule-based tools are switched on:
| Free tier | WePROXA | Proxyman trial |
|---|---|---|
| Session limit | None | None |
| Map Local rules | 5 | 2 |
| Block List rules | 10 | 2 |
| Breakpoint rules | 2 | 2 |
| Network Conditioning rules | 3 | 2 |
| Scripting rules | 2 | 2 |
| SSL interception hosts | 5 | 2 pinned domains |
| Workspaces / Scenarios | 1 workspace, 3 scenarios | Single tab |
Repeat Requests, certificate trust setup, system proxy management, and full request and response inspection are all in the WePROXA free tier too. Pro removes the limits and adds the Advanced Query Builder, network timing metrics, Scenario export, and MCP integration.
To be fair to Proxyman: 2 breakpoint rules and 2 scripting rules is the same as our free tier. The gap is in Map Local, Block List, and SSL hosts, which is where most day-to-day mocking happens.
Platforms and how each app is built
Section titled “Platforms and how each app is built”Charles runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and needs a Java Runtime Environment installed. That is also why it looks the way it does. It works, and it is the same app everywhere, but it does not feel like a Mac app or a Windows app.
Proxyman is native on macOS and also ships Windows and Linux builds, plus separate iOS and Android capture apps.
WePROXA is native on macOS and Windows only. The backend is Rust and the proxy is built on Hyper and Tokio. There is no Linux build, and if you need one, this is where the comparison ends for you.
Where WePROXA works differently
Section titled “Where WePROXA works differently”The feature lists overlap almost completely. Breakpoints, map local, throttling, scripting, replay, and diff exist in all three. Four things in WePROXA come from a different idea about what a debugging session is.
A setup is a file, not a checklist. A Scenario holds the rules for one acceptance criterion, the on/off state of each tool, any containment setting, and the HTTPS hosts it needs decrypted. Activating one is atomic, so traffic never runs against a half-applied setup. You export it as a bundle and commit it next to the code it mocks, and a teammate imports it and gets the same setup. Workspaces hold the reusable rules those Scenarios point at.
Unmocked requests can fail loudly. Pass-Through containment decides what happens to a request no Map Local rule answered. Set it to denyUnmatched and the calls you forgot to mock get refused instead of quietly reaching production. That is the difference between a test that passed because your fixtures cover the flow and one that passed because the real backend answered.
A blocked request does not have to get an answer. A 403 is still a reply, so the retry, backoff, and offline branches in your app never run. WePROXA’s Block List can instead drop the connection or hold it open, which is what those branches actually key on.
Rules can target a client, not just a URL. A Block rule takes an app name or a device IP, so you can block analytics from one browser while another keeps working.
Proxyman also supports MCP, so AI access is not a WePROXA-only feature. What we add on top is a plugin with skills for connection checks, traffic inspection, and mock authoring. The AI debugging walkthrough shows what that looks like on a real failure.
Where Charles and Proxyman are the better choice
Section titled “Where Charles and Proxyman are the better choice”Some of this is not close.
Charles is the oldest of the three. If you search for how to capture traffic from almost any device or framework, the guide you find was probably written for Charles. That body of tutorials has real value, and so does a license your team already owns.
Proxyman ships dedicated iOS and Android apps for capturing on the device itself. WePROXA handles remote devices and the iOS Simulator, but there is no companion mobile app. Proxyman also sells a proper team plan with shared logs, synced rules, and cloud storage. We do not have one yet.
Both of them run on Linux. We do not.
And both have been around longer than we have, with more users finding the rough edges first.
Try it against your own traffic
Section titled “Try it against your own traffic”Feature tables are a poor way to choose a debugging tool. Run one real broken request through each app instead.
Install WePROXA, capture your first HTTPS request, then see how far the free tier gets you before anything asks for money. If it covers your work, keep using it for free. If you hit the limits, Pro is $25.
Prices and limits change. Check Proxyman’s pricing and Charles’s license page yourself before you buy, and tell us if anything here is out of date.