Web proxy

You can access any image on a publicly-available URL using Web Proxy origin. This allows you to use ImageKit.io's real-time image optimization and transformation features on all existing images.

Prevent account abuse ****If you enable this origin on an URL-endpoint, it allows anyone to access any image using your account. To prevent this abuse, we strongly recommend you restrict the use of unsigned URLs. Do refer to the information provided after Step 2 of this guide about encoding URLs before signing them.

Step 1: Configure origin

1. Go to the external storage section in your ImageKit.io dashboard, and under the Origins section, click on the "Add origin" button.

2. Choose Web proxy from the origin-type dropdown.

3. Give your origin a name. It will appear in the list of origins you have added. For example - My proxy origin.

4. Leave the advanced options as it is for now.

5. Click on the Submit button.

🧙‍♂️Whitelist request from ImageKit.io ****Make sure that the image public URL is accessible from ImageKit.io. Learn more.

Step 2: Access the image through ImageKit.io URL-endpoint

When you add your first origin in the dashboard, the origin is by default made accessible through the default URL-endpoint of your ImageKit.io account. For subsequent origins, you can either create a separate URL-endpoint or edit the existing URL-endpoint (including default) and make this newly added origin accessible by editing the origin preference list.

Let's look at a few examples to fetch the images:

• Image public URL (old URL) ****https://www.example.com/rest-of-the-path.jpg

• The same master image using ImageKit.io URL-endpoint ****https://ik.imagekit.io/your_imagekit_id/https://www.example.com/rest-of-the-path.jpg

• Resized 300x300 image ****https://ik.imagekit.io/your_imagekit_id/tr:w-300,h-300/https://www.example.com/rest-of-the-path.jpg

So when you request https://ik.imagekit.io/your_imagekit_id/https://www.example.com/rest-of-the-path.jpg, ImageKit.io internally fetches the file from https://www.example.com/rest-of-the-path.jpg.

URL structure

            URL-endpoint                transformation              image public URL                                    
┌─────────────────────────────────────┐┌─────────────┐┌───────────────────────────────────────────┐
https://ik.imagekit.io/your_imagekit_id/tr:w-300,h-300/https://www.example.com/rest-of-the-path.jpg

If you get a "Not found" error while accessing the image, check out this troubleshooting guide.

🧙‍♂️Tips: You can also use a custom domain like images.example.com.

If you want to create a signed URL that uses a Web Proxy origin, you must encode the complete URL of the input image before signing it. For example, instead of using https://example.com/image.jpgas input for the signed URL, you should use https%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Fimage.jpg.

Step 3: Integrate and Go live

Now start using ImageKit.io URL endpoint in your application to accelerate image loading.

Get started with our quick start guides and SDKs:

pageGetting startedpageSDK

Learn about real-time image resizing:

pageImage Transformations