Idle Timeout (Max Timeout)

Every tunnel through Evomi has an idle timeout. If no data passes through it in either direction for that long, Evomi closes the connection. The default is 45 seconds.

Most scraping traffic never hits this limit. Long-lived connections can, though: streaming responses, slow LLM or inference calls, WebSockets, and HTTP/2 or gRPC connections that you keep open between requests. When the limit is hit, your client sees a plain TCP close (EOF) with no HTTP/2 GOAWAY and no error message.

The _maxtimeout- parameter changes this limit for a connection.

How It Works Permalink to How It Works

• The value is in seconds. Values from 5 to 300 are accepted.
• It measures inactivity, not total connection time. Each byte sent or received in either direction restarts the countdown, so an active connection can stay open well past the timeout.
• Values above 300 are reduced to 300, and values below 5 are raised to 5. If the value is not a whole number, the default of 45 seconds is used.
• 300 seconds (5 minutes) is the hard maximum. No password setting gives you a longer idle timeout.
• The setting applies to HTTP CONNECT tunnels (HTTPS) and SOCKS5 TCP connections.

Usage Permalink to Usage

Append _maxtimeout-<seconds> to your proxy password:

http://testuser:testpassword_maxtimeout-300@rp.evomi.com:1000

Implementation Examples Permalink to Implementation Examples

# HTTP CONNECT
curl -x http://rp.evomi.com:1000 -U testuser:testpassword_maxtimeout-300 https://ip.evomi.com/s

# SOCKS5
curl -x socks5h://rp.evomi.com:1002 -U testuser:testpassword_maxtimeout-300 https://ip.evomi.com/s

import requests

proxy_pass = "testpassword_country-US_session-abc123_maxtimeout-300"
proxy_url = f"http://testuser:{proxy_pass}@rp.evomi.com:1000"

proxies = {
"http": proxy_url,
"https": proxy_url,
}
response = requests.get("https://ip.evomi.com/s", proxies=proxies, timeout=310)
print(response.text)

const fetch = require('node-fetch');
const { HttpsProxyAgent } = require('https-proxy-agent');

const proxyPass = 'testpassword_maxtimeout-300';
const agent = new HttpsProxyAgent(`http://testuser:${proxyPass}@rp.evomi.com:1000`);

fetch('https://ip.evomi.com/s', { agent })
.then(res => res.text())
.then(body => console.log(body));

Keeping Connections Open Longer Than 5 Minutes Permalink to Keeping Connections Open Longer Than 5 Minutes

Because the timeout only measures inactivity, you can keep a connection open for as long as you need by making sure that it is never idle for 300 seconds:

• HTTP/2 / gRPC: send an HTTP/2 PING frame at regular intervals, such as every 30–60 seconds. Most HTTP/2 and gRPC clients have a keepalive option that does this.
• WebSockets: send WebSocket ping frames at regular intervals.
• Custom protocols: send an application-level heartbeat.

Bandwidth Multiplier Permalink to Bandwidth Multiplier

Using _maxtimeout- adds a 1.2x bandwidth multiplier, as other expert settings do. The multiplier applies whenever the parameter is present, whatever value you set. It adds to any other expert multipliers on the request, as explained in the Expert Settings Overview. Enterprise customers may have custom multiplier values.