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Proxy guides & insights

Everything you need to understand proxies and use them effectively — from beginner guides to in-depth comparisons.

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Featured13 min

Residential vs Datacenter vs ISP Proxies: Which Should You Choose?

Speed, authenticity, cost and use cases compared across the three main proxy types — with a decision rule, a worked cost model and the mistakes that burn budgets.

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Guides

All guides
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Guides9 min

Zero Fraud Score Proxies: What the Number Actually Means

Every provider advertises a zero fraud score. Almost none of them say which service produced it, or when — and both details decide whether the claim is worth anything.

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Guides10 min

What Is a Mobile Proxy?

Mobile proxies borrow the reputation of real phone subscribers. Why carrier NAT makes them nearly unbannable, what you give up in speed and targeting, and when the premium is justified.

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Guides11 min

How to Manage Multiple Instagram Accounts Without Getting Banned

One IP per account, a two-week warming schedule, and the daily action limits that actually trigger Instagram's blocks.

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Guides11 min

How to Scrape Google Search Results

Which proxies survive Google, the search parameters that control localisation, how to read CAPTCHAs as a rate signal, and a working Python example.

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Guides10 min

How to Test Proxy Quality Before You Buy

Nine checks that separate a proxy worth paying for from a cheap one, and the only benchmark that ultimately matters.

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A cluster of small house-shaped network nodes with one sending a lit signal arc to a distant server slab
Guides12 min

What Is a Residential Proxy? A Complete Guide

A plain-English explanation of what residential proxies are, how they work, what they cost per gigabyte, and when a different type is the better answer.

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Guides13 min

How to Choose the Best Proxies for Web Scraping

Which proxy type to use, how to size your pool, how rotation and geo-targeting work, and the response-quality checks that catch silent failures.

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Guides10 min

Rotating vs Sticky Proxy Sessions Explained

When to rotate IPs on every request and when to hold one — with a decision rule, session-length guidance and the bugs each choice causes.

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Guides8 min

HTTP vs SOCKS5 Proxies: Which Should You Use?

What actually differs between the two protocols, which one your tool needs, and why the choice matters far less than most guides suggest.

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A server rack inside a house-shaped shell, anchored to the ground by a single lit pin
Guides9 min

What Is an ISP Proxy?

ISP proxies combine residential trust with datacenter speed. How they work, what the static IP buys you, and the workloads where they are wasted.

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Dense rows of identical server slabs receding into haze with one slab at the front lit
Guides9 min

What Is a Datacenter Proxy?

How datacenter proxies work, the shared-versus-dedicated distinction that decides whether they work at all, and when their speed and low cost make them the right choice.

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A relay junction box with differently shaped connectors approaching from all sides and one lit connector seated
Guides8 min

What Is a SOCKS5 Proxy?

What SOCKS5 actually does at the protocol level, how the handshake works, what socks5h changes, and when it beats an HTTP proxy.

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Guides10 min

What Is Web Scraping?

What web scraping is, the pipeline behind it, where it is used, what it costs, and why proxies stop being optional the moment you scale.

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Guides13 min

How to Avoid Getting Blocked When Web Scraping

The six layers a modern anti-bot system checks, in the order it checks them — and what to change at each one to stay unblocked.

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A grid of separate walled cells each holding one token bound to its own routing line, with one cell lit
Guides12 min

How to Manage Multiple Accounts Without Bans

The setup that keeps accounts from being linked: one IP per account, isolated fingerprints, a realistic warm-up schedule and disciplined operational hygiene.

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Guides9 min

How Many Proxies Do I Need?

The formula for sizing a scraping pool, the fixed ratios for accounts and drops, and a worked bandwidth estimate you can copy.

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Guides10 min

Are Proxies Legal? What You Need to Know

Proxies are legal networking tools. What the case law actually says, which four legal regimes apply to scraping, and how to stay on the right side of each.

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Troubleshooting

All troubleshooting
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Troubleshooting11 min

HTTP 403 Forbidden: What Causes It and How to Fix It

403 means the request arrived, was understood and was refused. Which layer refused it decides the fix — and rotating IPs is the right answer far less often than people assume.

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Troubleshooting10 min

HTTP 429 Too Many Requests: How Rate Limits Work and How to Survive Them

429 is the one error that gets worse the harder you try. Read the headers, back off properly, and spread load across identities instead of hammering one.

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Troubleshooting9 min

407 Proxy Authentication Required: Every Cause and Its Fix

The one proxy error that is entirely on your side of the connection — and the handful of clients that cause it even when your credentials are perfect.

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Troubleshooting10 min

Cloudflare Error 1020 Access Denied: What Triggers It and How to Get Past It

1020 is not a rate limit and not a CAPTCHA — it is a rule someone wrote, matching something about your request. Finding out what it matched is the whole job.

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Troubleshooting9 min

Proxy Error Codes Explained: 407, 429, 502 and the Rest

Which errors come from the proxy and which from the target, why that distinction saves hours, and the specific fix for each code.

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Automation

All automation
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Automation11 min

Proxies in Python requests: Sessions, Rotation and the Mistakes That Cost Hours

The proxies dict takes thirty seconds to write and then behaves in four surprising ways. Sessions, encoding, SOCKS DNS and retries are where the hours actually go.

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Automation11 min

Playwright Proxies: Authentication, Per-Context Rotation and Real Geo Testing

One browser, many identities: set the proxy per context, keep locale and timezone honest, and stop leaking the fact that your headless Chrome is headless.

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Automation10 min

Puppeteer Proxies: Why Chromium Ignores Your Password, and What to Do About It

The most-searched Puppeteer proxy problem has a one-line answer and three architectural consequences nobody mentions.

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Automation11 min

Scrapy Proxies: Middleware, Rotation and Retry Logic That Holds Up

Scrapy's concurrency is the reason it gets blocked. Middleware for identity, AutoThrottle for pacing, and retries that know which errors are worth repeating.

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Buyer Guides

All buyer guides
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Buyer Guides11 min

Best Anti-Detect Browsers in 2026: An Operator's Comparison

Five anti-detect browsers compared on what actually matters — fingerprint quality, proxy handling and team workflows — and the one problem none of them solve.

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Buyer Guides10 min

Best Proxies for Sneaker Bots in 2026

ISP versus residential per site type, how many IPs a task count really needs, a pre-drop checklist and the mistakes that cost checkouts.

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Buyer Guides10 min

Best Proxies for Ticketing in 2026

Why the queue phase and the checkout phase need different proxies, how city targeting unlocks region-locked on-sales, and where the legal line sits.

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Comparisons

All comparisons
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Comparisons9 min

Proxies vs VPN: What's the Difference?

How proxies and VPNs differ in architecture, encryption and scale — and why a VPN quietly fails at scraping and multi-accounting.

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