Asks the recipient to establish a tunnel to the destination origin server, commonly used with proxies for HTTPS.
Quick facts
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Safe (does not modify state) | No |
| Idempotent (repeatable) | No |
| Cacheable | No |
Description
Asks the recipient to establish a tunnel to the destination origin server, commonly used with proxies for HTTPS.
Example
curl -x https://proxy.example.com:8080 https://api.example.com
Request example
CONNECT example.com:443 HTTP/1.1 Host: example.com:443
CONNECT vs POST
| CONNECT | POST |
|---|---|
| Open a tunnel through a proxy | Submit data to the server |
| Establishes a connection | Sends a message |
All HTTP methods
Frequently asked questions
CONNECT is not a safe method — calling it can change resource state.
CONNECT is not idempotent — repeated requests may produce different results.
Sources & standards
Updated 2026-08-18
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