Proxies for web scraping

Residential proxies help when a public site answers differently depending on the network or the country you come from. They do not replace a careful scraper.

What this is for

• Collecting public data such as listings, catalogs and open datasets.
• Gathering the regional version of a page for research.
• Testing your own crawlers from realistic networks.

Choosing a session type

If each page stands alone, leave rotation on: every request gets a new IP. If a flow spans several requests, such as pagination that relies on a cookie, use a sticky session so the requests share an IP.

Good practice

• Check the site's terms and robots rules, and collect only what you are entitled to collect.
• Limit concurrency and back off on errors. A proxy does not make overloading a site acceptable.
• Do not collect personal data without a lawful basis.
• Do not use proxies to get around logins or access controls.

Control traffic

You pay per gigabyte, so block images, media and fonts when you do not need them, and prefer an HTTP client over a full browser when the data is in the HTML. How to estimate traffic.

Connect

Most HTTP libraries take a proxy URL. The developer guide has examples, and the code generator adds Playwright.