After a Telegram Desktop update, the add proxy window got a fourth word next to the familiar MTPROTO, SOCKS5 and HTTP: WEB. If you pick it, Telegram asks for a domain and some "Secret". All you have is a t.me/proxy link someone sent you a while ago, and it seems to work fine. Searching for "web proxy" doesn't help much either: you get loud news stories, write-ups with half a screen of jargon, and sellers ready to hand you "a hostname and key in your account".

Let me be upfront: we sell MTProto proxies ourselves, so keep that in mind as you read. But our part comes only at the very end, and it makes no promises about WEB.

Where it came from after the update

The WEB type appeared in Telegram Desktop in version 7.1, at the end of August 2026. The app's changelog says it plainly: "Add new WEB proxy type to connection settings". Some news reports mention 7.1.1, but in the changelog the feature is listed under 7.1. A couple of days later 7.1.2 came out, where the developers fixed WEB proxies that didn't work on Windows and added a warning about the risks (more on that below).

Telegram's help pages, on the other hand, say nothing about WEB yet. It isn't on the proxy page or in the general FAQ, and they still describe the two main types, SOCKS5 and MTProto.

What's inside, in plain words

If you look at the Telegram Desktop code and at what its developers write about the server, a web proxy for Telegram still has an MTProto proxy at the end of the chain. With a regular MTProto proxy, Telegram connects to the server itself, using the address, port and secret. With WEB, it opens a hidden browser window (a WebView) that never shows up on screen, and through that window it goes to a real website over HTTPS. Behind the website, the server runs a middleman program, and that program hands everything over to an ordinary official MTProxy.

Telegram still encrypts your messages itself, and it sends data in the same format as it would to a regular MTProxy. The developers write that the secret itself is never given to the proxy page, and the middleman on the server passes data along without decrypting it. But whoever runs the server sees your IP and connection times, just as with MTProto, even though they can't read your messages.

Sometimes the hidden window can't connect. Then Telegram keeps trying in the background and offers to open the proxy page in your regular browser instead; there's an "Open browser" item in the proxy menu for that. This tab opens from an address on your own computer, it's in English, and it asks you to keep it open: "Keep this tab open while using Telegram." So if you see a tab like that, don't worry, that's what it is.

And to avoid confusion: a WEB proxy has nothing to do with Telegram Web, the version you open in a browser. Telegram Web doesn't support proxies at all, while the WEB type lives in the app. Like any proxy, it works only for Telegram, and the other programs on your computer go online as usual.

Why your link won't fit in this field

WEB has different fields. Instead of an address, a port and a secret, Telegram asks only for the server domain (the field is called "Web proxy server") and the "Secret", and it doesn't ask for a port at all, because for WEB it's always 443. You type the domain as is, something like proxy.example.com. You don't add a port, and the app won't accept an IP address or http:// either, while it strips https:// at the start on its own. The "Secret" field takes a regular 16-byte MTProxy secret, which is 32 characters made of digits and the Latin letters a to f.

This is where your usual link won't help. If the secret in it starts with ee, Telegram will treat it as unsupported in the WEB field. And even a secret of the right kind from a regular MTProto server won't work, because WEB needs a special server: its own domain, a website, the middleman and an MTProxy behind them. The Telegram Desktop developers themselves call the server side a proof of concept, that is, a trial version rather than a finished product.

If you do have WEB details, they go in the same place as any proxy: Settings, then Advanced, Connection type and Add proxy, and there you choose the WEB type. Sometimes a WEB proxy is sent as a link, roughly like this: t.me/webproxy?server=proxy.example.com&secret=…. It's best to open it in Telegram Desktop itself. The app recognises this kind of link and shows a connection window with a warning and a "Connect Proxy" button.

In a browser this link behaves differently. If you open it there, even with a made-up server, the t.me website shows not a proxy window but the page of someone else's public channel, which obviously has nothing to do with that server. The developers themselves write that the t.me website doesn't handle this address yet.

What Telegram warns you about, and is it on phones

When you add a WEB proxy in Telegram Desktop, the app shows a warning: "This WEB proxy runs a web page from its provider in the background while you're connected. Only use it if you trust the provider. It may also display a sponsored channel in your chat list. This doesn't reveal any of your Telegram traffic."

I like that Telegram is direct here: while you're connected, someone else's web page is running in the background, and it's up to you whether to trust its owner. Regular MTProto proxies can show a sponsored channel in your chat list too, and for them Telegram shows a similar warning, only shorter, so the last sentence about traffic is about that very channel. As for the page itself not seeing your messages, that's what the server developers write, as mentioned above.

With phones, here's where things stand for now: the WEB type has already appeared in the source code of Telegram for Android and iOS too. For Android, Telegram itself describes it as a proof of concept intended for testing that needs a current Android System WebView. The native Telegram for macOS has no WEB at all, only SOCKS5 and MTPROTO, although Telegram Desktop for Mac has it.

So do you need it

If MTProto via a link works for you, I see no reason to rush to WEB. The developers themselves don't promise the new type is better. There aren't many servers for it yet, they're run by individual people and companies, and Telegram Desktop doesn't route calls through a proxy of any type, WEB included.

WEB makes sense when there's a specific WEB server from someone you trust, and that person has given you a domain with a secret or a link. In its proxy help page, Telegram advises connecting only to proxies from a source you trust, and that applies to WEB just as much. I wouldn't buy a "WEB proxy" from the first seller in the search results or run installers from unknown places, because a page belonging to someone you know nothing about would be running in the background. If you want to understand how proxy types differ and whom to trust with them, that's covered in our article about proxies for Telegram.

And finally, as promised, about us. If what you need right now is not an experiment but a proxy that connects with a regular link, that's what we have: FreeGate gives you a personal MTProto proxy. It connects like any MTProto proxy, with a link, in Telegram on your phone and computer, and it works only inside Telegram, so your banking apps and everything else go online as usual. Each device gets its own link, and if it leaks, you change it in your account with one tap and the old one stops working at once. Telegram encrypts your messages, and we can't see them.

As for money: first you can try 1 day free after signing up with your email and confirming it, with no payment and no automatic charges. After that it's $1.00 for 30 days or $2.50 for 90 days, and the price is per device, so for a phone and a computer choose 2 when buying. Details at freegate.app/world.