There’s no need saying that you need proxies for web scraping at any reasonable scale. Come in now to learn more about proxies for web scraping. You will also learn about the best proxies to use and the number of proxies required.
Have you tried scraping a site without using proxies? What is the result like? Did you succeed or you got blocked from accessing that website for a while?
The truth is, unless you are scraping a few pages, you are bound to be blocked – thanks to request limits set by websites to fight against web automation bots such as crawlers and scrapers. It is no news saying website owner does not like their sites to be scrapped as it can potentially overwhelm their sites if it is low powered. Some do not like it as they see the practice as content theft.
Regardless of how site owners see it, the practice of web scraping has come to stay, and unless you cross some lines of technicalities, web scraping is completely legal.
However, because sites are fighting it, you need to go the extra mile to be able to extra the data you have interest in successfully. This article will be used to provide you recommendations on the best web scraping proxies to use. You will also get recommendations on the best proxy APIs to use if you don’t want to deal with managing proxies.
- Residential Proxies for Web Scraping: Smartproxy, Bright Data, and Soax
- Datacenter Proxies for Web Scraping: Proxy-Seller, Webshare, and Rayobyte
- Best Scraping Proxy API: Apify Proxy, Zyte, and Scraper API
Why You Need Proxies for Web Scraping
I ones worked on a gig to scrape the death data for Game of Throne, and I got that done for all cases of death without using a proxy. I was able to do this because all of the data is loaded at once, but you need JavaScript to render each.
I have had other experience of scraping small sites and a few numbers of pages without using a single proxy server. Also, I have worked on projects that got be blocked and blacklisted, and my device IP Address was the cause.
Why do you need proxies for web scraping?
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Exceeding Requests Limits
Every website has the number of requests it deems naturally for a period of time from an IP Address and will block further requests from such IP Address for a specific period of time if it tries to exceed the limit. This means that there’s a limit you can scrape a website with your device before you hit the limit. Proxies can provide you more IP Addresses you can use to exceed the limit.
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Access Location Specific data
Let say you are in Norway but want to scrape Google listing as displayed on the Google UK site. How do you do this? Baring in mind that listing varies, depending on your location? You can either move to the UK or use UK proxies. Using UK proxies is the best option as you spent less money and time – and still get the same result as one living in the UK.
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Bypass IP Block
If, for any reason, your IP Address has been blocked from accessing a particular website, using proxies will be the way to go.
Usually, this could happen to you because you spammed a website or someone on the same network as you did. For web scraping, this point becomes very important if you weren’t using a proxy, and your real IP Address was blocked.
- Instagram IP Ban? Guide to Using Instagram Despite IP Block!
- IP Scrambler – What is it and How does it work?
- How To Generate A Random IP Address For Each Session
How Many Proxies Do You Need?
The number of proxies you need is a function of the number of requests allowed on the website within an hour from a single IP Address and the number of pages you want to scrape. The request limits set by websites vary from website to website.
However, there seems to be an average, and that’s 10 requests per minute and 600 requests in an hour. The number of pages you can scrape in an hour varies depending on the programming language and libraries you are using and how optimized your code is. However, the average number of pages you can scrape in an hour is around 600,000 pages.
So let say you want to scrape 600,000 pages, and the request limit is 600 in an hour; the number of proxies required is 1000 proxies. the formula is below.
"Number of requests" / "Request limit" = "Proxies Needed"
600,000 / 600 = 1000 Proxies
Why Use a Proxy Pool?
From the analogy above, you can see that you require 1000 proxies. You need to manage them effectively, have a system of rotation that will make sure none of the IPs is used more than 600 times to avoid blocking.
If you have done this before, you will know that it is an added burden that you shouldn’t even think of if you have an option. the option here is a proxy pool, which is a manage list of proxies that is control and managed by a proxy network.
When you are using a proxy pool, you will make use of one entry point, and from there, the proxy pool system will decide at random which of the proxies/IP in the pool will your requests be routed through. It also takes care of IP rotation for you.
With a proxy pool, you do not need to think about the number of proxies you need as proxy pool providers allow you access to the whole pool or a subset, and pricing is by consumable bandwidth or ports. Most of the pools have their proxies in thousands in the case of datacenter IP proxy pools and in millions in the case of residential IP proxy pools.
Best Proxies for Web Scraping
When it comes to proxies for web scraping, you need to know that the best proxies are the proxies that work on your target website. This is because each website has its own unique anti-spam & anti-scraping system, and what works on Twitter might not work on YouTube. However, we can still reach an agreement on the best as there are some proxy providers that have proxies that are compatible with most complex websites.
We are going to be making recommendations on residential and datacenter proxies. While mobile proxies are the best, they are expensive and can’t be said to be cost-effective as residential proxies can get most of their works done.
Residential Proxies for Web Scraping
<Editor Choice>
Residential proxies are the best proxies for web scraping as they are undetectable, and as such, the record-high success rates and blocks are kept at a minimum. Some of the best providers are discussed below.
Smartproxy Residential Proxies
- IP Pool Size: Over 55million
- Locations: 195 locations across the globe
- Concurrency Allowed: Unlimited
- Bandwidth Allowed: Starts at 1GB
- Cost: Starts at $8.5/GB with Pay As You Go
Smartproxy is one of the premium residential IP pool providers in the market. Unlike in the case of Bright Data that you need $500 as the minimum for them to allow you to use their pool, Smartproxy will allow you access to their pool for as low as $14/month, and you can even choose a pay-as-you-go plan for $8.5/GB.
Both Smartproxy and Bright Data pricing are based on bandwidth. Smartproxy has high rotating proxies that change IP after every request, which makes it perfect for web scraping. If you need a session maintained, you can do that for 30 minutes with their sticky IPs.
Bright Data (Luminati)
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IP Pool Size: Over 72 million
- Locations: All countries in the world
- Concurrency Allowed: Unlimited
- Bandwidth Allowed: Starts at 40GB
- Cost: Starts at $500 monthly for 43GB
Bright Data (formerly Luminati) is arguable the best residential proxy provider with over 72 million residential IPs in Luminati's residential IP pool, making it one of the largest residential proxy network in the market. It has one of the best session control system in the market and allows you total control in terms of session management.
Luminati has proxies in all countries and in most cities in the world. It is compatible with all complex websites, and our scraping performance test proved to use that it is one of the best web scraping proxies in the market. Its IP rotation system is top-notch and gives lots of advanced setting.
Soax
- IP Pool Size: Over 5 million
- Locations: 100+ locations across the globe
- Concurrency Allowed: Unlimited
- Bandwidth Allowed: Starts at 8GB
- Cost: Starts at $99 monthly for 8GB
Soax residential proxy service was established only recently but has grown and developed into one of the best residential proxy providers in the market. If you’re looking for proxies for web scraping, then the Soax residential proxy network is available for you.
They have got a proxy pool with over 5 million residential IPS sourced from over 100 countries across the globe. Their proxies are rotating proxies that change the IP address it assigns to you. Its proxies are compatible with most automation bots including SEO tools.
SimplyNode
- IP Pool Size: Over 50 million
- Locations: All countries in the world
- Concurrency Allowed: Unlimited
- Bandwidth Allowed: Starts at 1GB
- Cost: Starts at $6 for 1GB
The Simplynode service is one of the best rotating residential proxy networks for web scraping. There is hardly any platform you can’t scrape data from except from the list of blocked sites. Yes, the SimplyNode service for legal reasons does not allow you to scrape government domains, financial service websites, and some news sites.
Aside from these targets, you can scrape all websites ranging from social media networks, and e-commerce sites, to flight deal websites. It does great for SEO scraping, ads verification, market research, and general web scraping.
It has a pool with over 50 million residential IPs sourced from over 150 countries across the globe. With this, you can scrape on a large scale and scrape even localized websites. It allows unlimited concurrent sessions and even comes with a proxy list generator which you can use to generate as many proxy endpoints as you like. For scraping, make sure you set it to rotate after 90 seconds as that is the shortest period supported.
Nimbleway
- IP Pool Size: Undisclosed
- Locations: 50 countries
- Concurrency Allowed: Unlimited
- Bandwidth Allowed: Starts from 75GB
- Cost: Starts from $600 monthly for 75GB
Nimbleway Residential Proxy network is another provider you can trust when it comes to proxies for web scraping. Its network is a rotating proxy that assigns you only residential IPs. You can choose the specific country, state, and city you want IP addresses from. The service has millions of IP addresses in its pool — however, unlike other providers, it does not make the exact size of its IP pool known.
One thing you will come to like about it is that it uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to choose the best IP address to assign to your requests in other to increase the chances of them succeeding without blocks. It is also a performance beast and can be said to be one of the fastest. It is also scalable as well and comes with an easy-to-use developer API. My major problem with this provider is that its pricing is expensive, as it starts from $600 monthly with 75GB.
IPRoyal
- IP Pool Size – Over 2 million IP addresses
- Locations – Over 195 countries worldwide
- Concurrency Allowed – Unlimited
- Bandwidth Allowed – Starts at 1GB
- Cost – Starts at $7 per 1GB
Unlike many other residential proxy providers, IPRoyal offers truly authentic residential proxies obtained from genuine users and internet service providers. Each of them is dedicated to a single user and obtained in an ethical and transparent manner. This makes them highly reliable and safe for web scraping.
IPRoyal’s residential proxy plans allow you to get a new IP after each request. If you need to maintain your IP for longer, you can do it with the sticky session for up to 24 hours. Their unlimited concurrent sessions, HTTP(S) and SOCKS5 support, never-expiring traffic, and city/state targeting are extremely valuable in web scraping.
Oculus Proxies
- IP Pool Size: Undisclosed
- Locations: 190+ countries
- Concurrency Allowed: Unlimited
- Bandwidth Allowed: Starts at 15GB
- Cost: Starts at $18 monthly for 15GB
Are you looking for the best proxies to scrape e-commerce sites? Then the Oculus Proxies is a good choice. Unlike the other services that use IPs from from P2P networks, it uses a shared pool of ISPs which offer you better performance in terms of speed and reliability.
The only major problem here is that the pool is a lot smaller than its competitors here as it has just over 300K IPs. However, it rotates IPs efficiently enough to avoid getting blocked and you get access to IPs from a good number of countries.
Being a shared pool of IP, I wouldn’t recommend you use it for tasks that require you to log in and maintain sessions. This is because you might end up sharing the same IP address with other users on the same website you use it and this can lead to suspicion that might get your account banned. Even though it is a shared IP pool, it is quite fast and undetectable to most web targets. It is charged based on bandwidth with the starting price per GB to be $1.2.
DataImpulse
- IP Pool Size: Over 5 million
- Locations: All countries in the world
- Concurrency Allowed: Unlimited
- Bandwidth Allowed: Starts at 5GB
- Cost: Starts at $5 monthly for 5GB
Proxies can take up a large chunk of your scraping budget. If you are on a tight budget and need to cut costs as much as possible, then using a cheap residential proxy is the way to go. I will recommend the DataImpulse service to you. The service has a pool with just over 5 million IP addresses which already suggests to you that at best, should be used for medium-scale projects. In fact, I will recommend you use this for only smaller projects because of its performance.
The service is really cheap and what you will have to compromise here is performance. It is the slowest on this list and you can even notice the slow performance sometimes. However, it is still usable for small projects which can benefit from its cheap pricing and other features.
It allows you to choose between changing IPs after every request or a rotation period which is up to an hour. In terms of geo-targeting, only country-level targeting is supported. Pricing for this starts from $5 for 5GB.
NetNut
- IP Pool Size: Over 52+ million IP Addresses
- Locations: Worldwide coverage
- Concurrency Allowed: Unlimited
- Bandwidth Allowed: Starts at 20GB
- Cost: Starts at $15/GB
In the world we live in now, data is king. And enterprises, companies, and tech teams who are able to get valuable insights from the web tend to stay ahead of the game. We certainly see how you can unlock your full web scraping potential with NetNut's highly scalable residential proxies. In the web scraping arena, the importance of reliable and high-performance proxies cannot be understated. NetNut delivers the perfect solution to address your data extraction needs.
With over 52 million undetectable IPs, NetNut provides the ultimate web scraping infrastructure that gives an edge. The direct ISP connectivity ensures 24/7 availability, so you can maintain your web sessions running as long as you need without interruptions. Say goodbye to annoying IP blocks, CAPTCHAs, and reCAPTCHAs, as NetNut guarantees comprehensive global coverage and zero restrictions.
What about speed? NetNut’s one-hop ISP connectivity got you covered – it eliminates traffic delays, enabling lightning-fast data collection. Whether you're monitoring SEO rankings, tracking SERPs, verifying ads, conducting market research, or extracting web data for various IT industries, NetNut's static residential proxies can power through any target with ease.
When web scraping is essentially the name of your expertise, NetNut's residential proxies are the ultimate power-up you need behind it. You can start with one of their paid plans, but the 7-day free trial gives you the opportunity to see that promise in action before committing to a budget. We liked the flexibility of the paid plans, which are designed to give you more value for money as you move to higher packages.
Proxyrack
- IP Pool Size: over 2 million
- Locations: 140 countries
- Concurrency Allowed: unlimited
- Cost: $120 for 250 proxies for a month
Proxyrack is another residential proxy provider that you can use their proxies for web scraping. While it has over 2 million residential IPs in its pool, only a little over 500,000 is available to use at any moment. You will agree with me that unless you are scraping at a very big scale, this number of proxies is enough for you to use.
In terms of pricing, Proxyrack can be said to be pocket-friendly as you can buy a port for $15. Its pricing is not based on bandwidth as it is in the case of the two above. They have both rotating proxies and sticky IPs.
Datacenter Proxies for Web Scraping
Datacenter proxies can also be used for web scraping. But when using them, you have to be careful and selective. They are not as undetectable as residential proxies and, as such, can easily be blocked.
Also important is the fact that they do not work on some complex websites like Instagram. There are no many datacenter proxy pools in the market as we have many residential IPs. Below are the popular ones right now.
Smartproxy Datacenter Proxies
- IP Pool Size: 100K US and EU IP with 400 subnets
- Locations: US and EU
- Concurrency Allowed: Unlimited
- Cost: Starts at $30 monthly for 50GB
Smartproxy traditionally is known to offer residential proxies. While they have proven to be a force to be reckoned with in that market, they have also ventured into the datacenter proxy market and offer rotating datacenter proxies which you can use for web scraping.
The datacenters they use their IP addresses have been vetted and tested to ensure that only high-quality datacenter IPs are used. They currently have over 100K datacenter IPs which you can use. However, the pool is not private to you – you will have to share it with other users.
Fortunately, the number of users per IP at any given time is small so optimum performance can be achieved. Unlike other datacenter proxies that offer unlimited bandwidth, bandwidth is limited based on the plan you subscribe to. The minimum monetary commitment is $30 and that would give you 50GB which you will agree with me that it is cheap considering you have access to 100K IPs. US and EU locations are supported.
Proxy-Seller
- IP Pool Size: Undisclosed
- Locations: over 70 countries supported
- Concurrency Allowed: Unlimited
- Bandwidth Allowed: Unlimited
- Cost: Starts from $1.77 per proxy monthly
Second on our list of best datacenter proxies for web scraping is Proxy-Seller. The service offer datacenter IPs with a low spam score. This means that you will not get blocked by default except you give a site a reason to. The service has got support for about 400 between and 800 subnets which makes it redundant against the subnet ban.
In terms of location coverage, over 70 countries are captured which makes it one of the best in terms of location coverage. As with other datacenter proxies, you will have to purchase each IP. However, the pricing is cheap, especially if you are purchasing in bulk which makes it a good candidate for web scraping proxy.
Webshare
- Locations: worldwide
- Concurrency Allowed: 500 threads
- Bandwidth Allowed: Unlimited
- Cost: Starts at $5.44 for 5 ports for a month
Webshare is a datacenter proxy provider that offers its users free proxies. Aside from their free proxies, they have paid proxies that are faster, elite, and works quite well for web scraping. If you have been reading our article, we do not support the use of free proxies as they usually come with some non-favorable clauses. Webshare does not have high rotating proxies, their IP rotation system works based on time, and this can be either 5 minutes or 1 hour.
Proxy-IPv4
- IP Pool Size: Undisclosed
- Locations: over 20 countries supported
- Concurrency Allowed: Unlimited
- Bandwidth Allowed: Unlimited
- Cost: Starts from $1.8 per proxy monthly
Proxy-IPv4 takes fifth place on our list of proxy servers for web scraping. With reliable data center IP addresses with minimal spam rates and 150 networks and 200 subnets available to them, Proxy-IPv4 ensures uninterrupted website access unless engaging in activities that warrant blocking.
It enables requesting IPs at maximum variation to avoid blocking entire subnets by offering maximum variance when providing IP requests – thus effectively preventing entire subnets from being banned at once.
Rayobyte
- Locations: 9 countries
- Concurrency Allowed: Unlimited
- Bandwidth Allowed: Unlimited
- Cost: Starts at $11 monthly
Rayobyte just like other datacenter proxies on the list, is quite cheap. Interestingly, their proxies come with unlimited bandwidth and allow you the freedom to create the number of threads you want to create. Rayobyte is developed by Blazing SEO LLC, a web service company with interest in servers, VPS, and proxies. Their proxies are quite good for web scraping, especially in the area of SEO, which is a focus of its developers.
Stormproxies
- IP Pool Size: 70,000
- Locations: US, EU region, and some few other locations
- Concurrency Allowed: starts at 40
- Cost: Starts at $50 monthly for 5 ports
Stormproxies is one of the most diversified proxy providers in terms of the use cases their proxies are applicable to. Their datacenter proxy pool contains over 70,000 IPs, and it is priced based on threads; that’s the number of concurrent requests allowed.
Its pricing is actually cheap, but the number of locations is limited as it has only US and EU proxies with a few other locations. When it comes to IP rotation, Stormproxies datacenter pool support session-based rotation and time-based rotation.
Best Scraping Proxy API
<Hire others to handle proxies with more cost>
The proxies discussed above are for those that know how to manage proxies and browsers. If you are new to using proxies and you do not want to bother yourself managing it, you can outsource proxy management to Scraping proxy API providers. However, you just need to know that you will be paying more, and that can be termed as wasteful in some instances.
Smartproxy SERP Scraping API
- Proxy Pool Size: Datacenter & Residential IP Pool
- Supports Geotargeting: Worldwide Locations
- Cost: Starts at $50 for 13,000 requests
- Free Trials: 3-Day Money Back Guarantee
- Special Functions: Parsed JSON & 100% success rate
Smartproxy’s SERP Scraping API lets you target Google, Yandex, Baidu, Bing, and other search engines with a 100% rate. This full-stack SERP API involves a proxy network, scraper, and data parser so you don’t have to build custom solutions or invest in separate tools, Which is an easy-to-use data extraction tool that will guarantee a successful delivery from search engines in raw HTML or parsed JSON.
What’s truly impressive about this full-stack scraping API is that Smartproxy incorporates its advanced rotating network with 40+ million residential and datacenter IPs. If something goes wrong, no worries – you only pay for successful requests. You can get your hands on this product for $50/month + VAT.
Apify Proxy
- Proxy Pool Size: Datacenter & Residential IP Pool
- Supports Geotargeting: Not specific
- Cost: Starts at $99 for 200,000 requests
- Free Trials: $5 platform credits monthly & 30-day trial of proxy API request
- Special Functions: Enables downloading of Google Search result pages
Apify Proxy has a pool of tens of thousands of high-quality datacenter and residential proxies. The proxy service can be used on the Apify platform or on your own servers. Its unique Google SERP proxies also enable you to download Google Search engine or Google Shopping result pages using a specialized service. Apify Proxy supports HTTPS, geolocation targeting, and intelligent IP rotation based on machine learning.
The proxies used by Apify were designed specifically for web scraping and data extraction and are optimized for bandwidth, scalability and find the perfect best balance between full geographical freedom and flexible session management.
Zyte (Crawlera)
- Proxy Pool Size: Not specific – tens of thousands
- Supports Geotargeting: Yes
- Cost: Starts at $99 for 200,000 requests
- Free Trials: 10,000 requests within 14 days
- Special Functions: Avoid Captchas
Zyte formerly known as Crawlera is one of the most popular proxy APIs used for web scraping. It has its own proxy pool it uses to help you evade detection and ban. While it does not have a Captcha solver, it tends to avoid its occurrence altogether.
One thing interesting about Crawlera and other proxy API is that pricing is based on a number of requests, and you will only be charged for successful requests. Just see Crawlera as a smart downloader where you send an API request through, and you get the page you requested.
ScrapingBee
- Proxy Pool Size: Not disclosed
- Supports Geotargeting: Yes
- Cost: Starts at $29 for 250,000 API credits
- Free Trials: 1,000 API calls
- Special Functions: Handles headless browser for JavaScript rendering
ScrapingBee is a web scraping API that can help you handle headless browsers such as Chrome and also takes care of proxies for you. Just like Crawlera, it has a proxy pool that does automatic proxy rotation and also has support for geotargeting.
With ScrapingBee, you do not have to worry about rendering JavaScript as it can do that for use using the latest version of Chrome in headless mode. ScrapingBee is perfect for web scraping and SEO, as well as lead generation, among other tasks.
Read more, Web Scraping API to Help Scrape & Extract Data.
Scraper API
- Proxy Pool Size: over 40 million
- Supports Geotargeting: depends on the plan chosen
- Cost: Starts at $29 for 250,000 API calls
- Free Trials: 1,000 API calls
- Special Functions: Solves Captcha and handles browsers
From its name, you can tell that it is a tool for web scraping. This proxy API provider has a proxy pool of over 40 million IPs. Their pool is mixed with datacenter proxies, residential proxies, and mobile proxies. One thing I like about Scraper API is that it provides support for solving Captcha. Aside from this, it also has support for handling headless browsers and allows you to enjoy unlimited bandwidth. It also supports geotargeting.
FAQs on Web Scraping Proxies
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In-house Proxy Vs. Outsourced Proxy
The best type of proxies are in-house proxies as they ensure data privacy, and you can fine-tune them to your specific requirements. However, building a proxy in-house is not a priority, even for big companies. The cost that comes with it and the engineering requirements makes it a bad idea to develop one. Using an off-the-shelf proxy solution such as the ones above is the way to go. Just make sure you are using one that ensures data privacy.
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Should I Use Proxies or a Proxy API?
The two of them achieve the same result, but proxy APIs are more expensive since they help you handle proxy management issues and help out with handling Captcha.
However, you have to know that proxy APIs are for inexperienced web scrapers and those not ready to manage proxies. If you are ready, it is best you use proxies and save the cost that would be encore if you were to use a proxy API.
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Which Proxies are the Best for Web scraping?
It depends on the site you want to scrape from. But generally, proxies that are undetectable and unblockable are the best. They also have to be fast, secure and maintain data privacy. All of the premium proxy providers have proxies that have these qualities, and in general, we would vote residential proxies are Best Proxies for Web scraping.
- What is a Residential Proxy & How it works?
- The Best Google Proxies for SERP data & Never Get Google Blocked
Conclusion
Proxies are very important in the business of web scraping as they deal with the problem of IP bans and accessing geotargeted web content. However, not all proxies will work for a web scraping project. Depending on your project requirement, budget, and experience, you can get proxies or proxy APIs that will work for your project from the list.