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hboonyesterday at 7:01 AM11 repliesview on HN

I don't have elaborate needs and have used Charles for many years. A few years ago I switched to https://proxyman.com and found it easier to use.


Replies

shubhamjainyesterday at 9:27 AM

Proxyman is 100x value for 2x the price. I am not even kidding. Native UI, shortcuts, cert installation helper tools. And script editor to programmatically edit requests is so much better and powerful than Charles' request editor.

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aaronbrethorstyesterday at 8:14 AM

Likewise. I was a dedicated user of Charles for about a decade. It’s great, but if you are a macOS user, Proxyman is better, easier, and more macOS friendly.

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shelledyesterday at 12:45 PM

At a previous workplace, Charles Proxy was not in the list of approved software. I don't recall the reason - it might have been cost, but we used lots of paid tools, and since it was in the restricted category, we couldn't pick and use (we handled a copious amount of Western PII, from reading, working on it, to storing it). Two were approved: Requestly and another was a link to an internal wiki with a really "interesting" process involving Wireshark and whatnot. Needless to say, that doc was one of the most clicked and least read. I tried Charles at a later place that offered a license, and I went back to Requestly, which I really found to be more straightforward or simpler to use.

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mavamaartenyesterday at 10:23 AM

If the devs behind Charles would just tweak their UI a bit, it would be the absolute perfect tool. Functionally it pretty much already is. Mainly being able to turn on and off and configuring features I use all the time (rewrite, map local, map remote) is always a journey through menu's that don't always make sense. The only functional thing I'm missing is some DNS stuff (e.g. throttling or breaking DNS specifically).

I tried using proxyman for a while, and while definitely powerful and more modern, it honestly didn't feel "better" or more powerful so I didn't go for yet another license.

mkw5053yesterday at 1:32 PM

Same. At some point there was a new Charles version and I could not figure out how to use it the way I had used the old version (I admit I forget exactly what I was trying to do), and it was trivial in Proxyman. Proxyman also has a great app.

ghxstyesterday at 3:05 PM

I went from charles to mitmproxy to proxyman and am currently using Reqable. Something all of these miss imo is a way to modify TLS handshakes.

gokaygurcanyesterday at 10:53 AM

I frequently use them both. The main reason why I can't leave Charles is the lack of session grouping in Proxyman. Seeing a huge list of irrelevant items is annoying after some point. In Charles, I can save that session with a name and move on to something else. It's almost impossible to leave one for the other at this point for me.

This goes without saying, but huge thanks to the both developers for making these available.

VoidWhispereryesterday at 12:56 PM

Is anyone else having trouble loading the proxyman website? (Firefox, Windows 11) - it freezes the entire browser..

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ChrisMarshallNYyesterday at 7:42 AM

Pretty nice.

Does it work for Xcode simulators?

I use Charles extensively (I am using it for the development I’m doing right now), and it needs to work on simulators.

Cost isn’t an issue for me. Fitness to purpose is important. I won’t cripple my development capacity, in order to save $50.

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sgtyesterday at 7:39 AM

Looks much better, thanks for that tip

cientificoyesterday at 7:13 AM

That it's an osx ONLY app.

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