mitmproxy vs Busymate DevTools:
mitmproxy is the tool many of us learned interception on — free, MIT-licensed, and endlessly scriptable in Python. This page is about what it is not trying to be.
mitmproxy gives you a console, a web interface and a headless runner, speaks HTTP/1 through HTTP/3 and WebSockets, and lets a Python addon rewrite anything on the wire. Phones reach it the classic way: point the device's proxy at the machine running it and install the CA from mitm.it. Busymate DevTools puts an app on the phone instead, uploads what it captures to one hosted feed, and adds the pieces a team needs around that feed — roles, an audit trail, a phone farm, and an MCP surface for AI agents.
Built for the phone,
Compare the complete workflow: where capture runs, how you share access, and how you automate debugging.
Capture from iPhone, Android, Chrome, the proxy, and your phone farm in one place. Teammates see requests from devices they own or have been granted access to.
454 MCP tools let your agent inspect captured traffic and act within your role. Destructive actions require confirmation.
A rack of real Android and iOS devices you mirror, tap and script from the browser — or from a sentence typed to the agent.
Permissions are enforced in the database, actions are recorded in an audit trail, and the dashboard and API cannot reveal stored vault secrets.
The same questions,
Our column lists only what has shipped. Their column rests on what we read on their own public pages — anything we could not confirm is marked, not guessed.
- Included
- Partly
- Not included
- Not verified
Facts about mitmproxy were read on its public product, pricing and documentation pages on 2026-09-01. If something has changed, tell us and we will correct the page. Report a correction
When mitmproxy is the right pick
Plenty of teams should keep using mitmproxy. These are the cases where we would tell you to.
You want a free, MIT-licensed tool
No licence, no seat, no hosted service — install it and go. For an individual, a CI job or a security lab that is exactly right.
You script everything in Python
Addons with the full flow in hand, headless runs, client and server replay — mitmproxy is a programmable proxy first and a UI second.
You need HTTP/3, raw TCP or UDP
mitmproxy's protocol reach — HTTP/3, WebSockets, DNS, TCP and UDP — is broader than a mobile-first capture app's.
Questions people ask
Is mitmproxy really free?
Yes — free and open source under the MIT licence, maintained by a core team with community contributions. Busymate DevTools is free to install, with paid tiers still published as a draft, and its source is private.
How do phones connect to each?
With mitmproxy you set the phone's proxy to the machine running it and install the certificate from mitm.it, enabling full trust on iOS. With Busymate DevTools the phone runs the app, which captures through a local VPN and uploads on its own — no proxy setting and no machine on the same network.
Which is more scriptable?
mitmproxy, by a wide margin: a Python addon has the whole flow in its hands. Busymate DevTools scripts are scoped per device, user or service and run server-side, which is simpler and shared but less open-ended.
Does mitmproxy have a team or AI layer?
We did not find one on the pages we read, so the matrix marks those rows as not verified rather than absent. Busymate DevTools ships both: roles enforced in the database and an MCP tool surface with confirm-gated writes.
See your own traffic
Follow the setup guide for your capture source, then open a request in the dashboard. HTTPS decryption requires certificate trust and a supported client.