r/ProxyUseCases

Hey everyone,

I'm Ian Kerins, CEO & Co-Founder of ScrapeOps.io.

After four great AMAs with the r/WebScrapingInsider community, we're excited to bring you our fifth guest.

This Thursday, August 20, at 10:30 AM GMT+3, we'll be joined by Stan Sadokov from NodeMaven for a discussion around one of the questions almost every serious scraping operation eventually has to deal with:

How do you actually choose the right residential proxy provider?

NodeMaven is a proxy infrastructure provider focused on residential, mobile, and ISP IPs, with an emphasis on IP quality rather than simply advertising the biggest pool.

Instead of relying purely on massive raw IP counts, NodeMaven uses real-time quality filtering to identify and remove flagged or low-reputation IPs before they cause problems for customers.

WebScrapingInsider AMA #5 with NodeMaven

During the AMA, we can dig into topics like:

• Residential proxy quality
• How proxy providers measure IP reputation
• Choosing between residential, mobile and ISP proxies
• IP rotation vs. sticky sessions
• Proxy success rates and why they vary by target
• Detecting and removing bad IPs
• Proxy performance for large-scale web scraping
• How proxy pricing actually works
• What to look for when evaluating a proxy provider
• Where residential proxy infrastructure is heading

We've had some great discussions in the community so far:

Our first AMA covered proxy infrastructure, Cloudflare bypass, browser automation, and scaling scrapers.

Our second with WebClaw explored AI agents, hidden APIs, open source scraping, and LLMs.

Our third with CloakBrowser went deep on stealth Chromium, fingerprinting, anti-bot detection, and browser automation.

Our latest with Browser Use brought insights on browser agents, AI-powered scraping, proxies, evaluations, and browser infrastructure.

We're excited to keep the conversation going.

If you're building web scrapers, data pipelines, browser automation, account management systems, or proxy infrastructure, or you're simply trying to figure out why one proxy provider works better than another, this should be a good one.

Drop your questions below, and Stan Sadokov from NodeMaven and I will start answering them during the AMA.

Looking forward to seeing everyone there!

Ian

Hi all,

With anti-bot systems updating constantly, we are always fine-tuning our infrastructure to handle the toughest targets in the wild.

Right now, we are looking to gather some fresh performance data from the community. Whether you are running e-commerce scrapers, ad verification, or multi-account setups, we’re handing out 1GB of free data to several testers to run through their existing pipelines.

The details:

• Completely free: No payment info required, no auto-billing, and zero strings attached.
• Any use case: Plug it into your current stack and run it exactly as you normally would alongside your current provider.
• Feedback based: All we ask in return is a quick note on your success rates, speed, and how it handled your specific targets (especially if you're hitting strict firewalls like Cloudflare or Akamai).

If you want to grab 1GB of free testing bandwidth, shoot me a DM and I’ll get an account spun up for you.

Running a scraper across 10 to 12 social accounts and trying to keep sessions stable without spending a ton. Datacenter is cheap but seems easier to flag, residential looks better but per gb pricing gets expensive fast.

Would you use sticky sessions or rotating IPs for this? Trying to stay under $50 a month. Also, per gb vs per port, which one actually makes more sense here? Honest advice needed cause I’m pretty new to this.

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For a long time, I treated VPN as the obvious solution for running several accounts. Change the IP, pick a location, and you're done.

That worked until the friction started piling up: extra verification, repeated CAPTCHAs, sessions getting kicked out, and accounts behaving like the platform no longer trusted the login environment.

The issue is that VPN usually changes the network for the entire machine. If several accounts are active at once, they can all end up sharing the same exit point. Change the VPN server and suddenly every account appears to change location together.

Proxies give you much more granular control.

you can structure it like:

Profile 1 → Proxy 1
Profile 2 → Proxy 2
Profile 3 → Proxy 3

That makes it easier to keep each profile on a consistent network rather than constantly moving everything at once. Mobile proxies are useful in some cases because traffic comes through carrier networks, but IPs aren't the whole story. A cleaner setup usually combines separate network routes with isolated browser profiles or cloud phones, matching timezone/location settings, and sensible session management.

The way I think about it now:

VPN = device-level routing
Proxy = profile-level routing

For people managing several profiles, that extra control is often the biggest advantage.

i initially believed that having better proxies would be a solution to all of my problems. but the more i work with various problems then the clearer it becomes that proxies are just a part of the entire problem.

Even with good proxies i stuck into random verification challenges, unstable sessions and even browsers that do not act as expected. it seems that a browser environment is just as influential as a proxy and cannot decide where to put more effort.

I want to create a setup that is consistent and simple to manage rather than trying out new settings all the time and hoping for something to improve.

for people who know more about it then what kind of browser setup has proven to work well together with your proxies?

I learned this the hard way after deploying a data extraction script that got blocked almost immediately.

The script itself looked fine. Error logs showed nothing useful, the terminal just went dead. The real issue was the proxy infrastructure: the IPs had poor reputation, obvious datacenter characteristics, and I hadn’t tested them properly against the actual target before deployment.

That changed how I test proxies.

Just checking whether a proxy connects and returns a different IP isn’t enough. Before running anything at scale, I now look at:

• Geo/location
• ASN and provider
• Connection stability
• Reputation / previous abuse signals
• Most importantly, how the actual target responds

Proxy type matters too:

Static residential — better for longer sessions or account-based workflows
Rotating residential — useful when you need a larger IP pool
Mobile LTE/5G — useful for traffic where mobile networks are expected
Datacenter — fast and cheap when reputation requirements are less strict

Biggest takeaway: test your infrastructure against the actual target, not just an IP checker.

A proxy can be technically “working” and still be useless if the target rejects it on the first request.

Curious what everyone here checks before putting a proxy pool into production.

Figured it'd be useful to share some basics for anyone just getting into proxies. Starting with the simplest one, finding your IP.

Public IP is easy. Search "what is my IP" on Google and it shows up right at the top.

Local IP depends on the device.

• Windows: run `ipconfig` in Command Prompt
• macOS: System Settings > Network > your active connection
• iPhone: Settings > Wi-Fi > tap the info icon next to your network
• Android: Wi-Fi settings > gear icon next to the connected network

The quick difference between the two is that your public IP is your network as the internet sees it; the local IP is one device inside it. You'll run into both when setting up a printer, remote access, or troubleshooting a connection.

Hope that helps!

Quick update for anyone still tracking this. After the FBI/IRS-CI seizure back in July and the whole Popa botnet mess, netnut.com and netnut.io are still behind the seizure banner, but Alarum just quietly stood up a new site at netnut.ai. New branding, new positioning too, it's leaning hard into the "AI era" now with an LLM scraper API and RAG/agent framing instead of the old residential proxy messaging, (they still sell those, just not being pushy about it.)

No public statement yet about the Popa allegations or what changed on the sourcing side. But still, the company took a hit and lost thousands of clients because of this mess. Will update if Alarum puts out anything official

Doing some market research for a client and need to check pricing and survey pages across 15 to 20 regions. traffic is pretty light, mostly just testing what shows up from different locations.

Been looking at residential proxies, but a lot of the plans seem aimed at agencies or people moving serious volume. $300+ minimums dont make much sense when Im only running this for a few weeks. Any smaller providers or pay as you go setups worth looking at? mainly care about decent geo coverage and not having to buy way more bandwidth than I need.

The tricky thing with screen scraping is that most people reach for it when they don't need it.

The difference

Web scraping reads a page's HTML or an API. The data arrives already structured, tags and values you can grab directly. Screen scraping reads what's rendered on screen, so the data arrives as pixels and you need OCR to turn it back into text.

https://preview.redd.it/ovo6pbl07zih1.png?width=903&format=png&auto=webp&s=9fe453509e0405de1b4051afc1392b7d5a4458fe

Why the extra step matters

More stages means more places for things to break, and OCR errors are sneaky. In a quick test with Tesseract, clean text read at 100% accuracy, but a slightly low-res capture hit 96% and still flipped a price from 1299.00 to 2299.00. A blurry one turned a 4.6 rating into 46. The headline accuracy looks fine while single digits quietly corrupt your dataset.

When to actually use it

If the data exists in the HTML or an API, parse that. Screen scraping is for when it genuinely only exists visually, like prices rendered as images, embedded charts, scanned PDFs, or legacy terminal systems with no API at all.

If you do go the OCR route

Capture tight regions instead of full pages. If the number you need sits in one panel, screenshot that panel. Less noise means cleaner OCR output, and small layout changes elsewhere won't break your job.

https://preview.redd.it/m7zo8tj17zih1.png?width=970&format=png&auto=webp&s=08c196ae71b80971a0fc1368691f3b9ec11c6337

Validate output against expected formats, especially numbers. Don't trust raw OCR text for anything that ends up in a dataset.

For JS-heavy pages, render in a headless browser first, then capture. A plain HTTP request to a single-page app returns an empty shell.

One last thing

Budget for maintenance. A code-level parser breaks when the markup changes, a screen scraper breaks when the layout changes, and layouts change more often.

Curious if anyone here has run OCR pipelines at scale, and how you handle validation for numeric fields.

Please please PLEASE, I really need to have some proxy for j.ai!! I don't want to spend money using it, but I honestly would love to have proxy. I tried DeepSeek Flash once, but it's obvs limited, so I want something a little more permanent... hope to have someone comment on here!! (Also, new to Reddit XD)

You buy a proxy, connect it, and expect everything to work. Then Instagram asks for verification, Google floods you with CAPTCHAs, or a scraper suddenly stops. The real problem is often how it is configured. A few small setup mistakes can quickly turn a reliable IP into blocked accounts.

Here are most common mistakes:

1. Sharing one IP across many accounts. Platforms can link accounts through the same network identity, increasing the risk of checks and restrictions.
2. Choosing the wrong proxy type. Datacenter, residential, and mobile proxies are built for different tasks; the wrong match leads to blocks, poor speed, or unnecessary costs.
3. Rotating IPs too often or not enough. Accounts need stable sessions, while scraping usually requires controlled rotation.
4. Ignoring browser fingerprints. Different IPs will not help if every account uses the same device and browser signals.
5. Reusing one browser profile. Cookies, cache, and session data can connect accounts even after the IP changes.
6. Skipping account warm-up. New accounts that become active too aggressively are more likely to trigger verification or restrictions.
7. Relying on proxies alone for scraping. Poor request timing, headers, session handling, and aggressive traffic patterns can still expose automation.

The key rule: match the proxy, session strategy, browser environment, and behavior to the exact workflow.

Effective proxy management is about matching the lifetime of an IP address to your authentication flow and the specific task your script is performing. If you do not follow the rules you will always end up with blocked accounts and stopped sessions

Key principles:

• Never change the IP address during an active authenticated session
• Use sticky sessions when working with cookies
• Configure the correct GEO for the target website
• Verify IP quality and reputation before starting

Best proxies for your target:

• Rotating residential proxies → large-scale scraping of independent pages
• Sticky residential proxies → product catalogs and authenticated sessions
• Static ISP proxies → long-running tasks with a consistent IP address
• Mobile proxies → workflows that require maximum network stability and trust

IP rotation should match the task. Independent requests can be distributed across multiple IPs, while authenticated workflows require a stable IP address throughout the entire session.

An ISP proxy is a proxy server that uses an IP address registered to, or associated with, an internet service provider (ISP). These proxies are typically static, meaning the IP address remains the same throughout the rental period.

When you connect through an ISP proxy, your browser, application, or other approved tool sends traffic to a proxy endpoint using connection details such as a host, port, username, and password. The proxy then forwards your requests through the assigned ISP-associated IP address.

As a result, the destination website sees the proxy IP address rather than your original network IP.

Typical Setup Process

- Rent an ISP proxy in the country or city you need.
- Copy the proxy connection credentials provided by the service.
- Configure the proxy in your browser, application, operating system, or approved automation tool.
- Verify the visible IP address, geographic location, ASN, DNS behavior, and IP reputation.
- Assign the proxy to a specific workflow, account, browser profile, or application.
- Keep the same IP for the required session or rental period when consistency is important.

Common Use Cases

- Long-running authenticated sessions. Accounts that repeatedly log in from the same browser profile benefit from a consistent network

- Regional quality assurance. Product teams can test websites, checkout flows, content, pricing, and localisation from a stable connection in a target region

- E-commerce and marketplace operations. Authorised shop-management workflows may require stable access from a defined country or city

- Monitoring and observability. Availability checks, search monitoring, page rendering, and regional performance tests are easier to compare when the network identity remains consistent

- Bandwidth-heavy workloads. When a task transfers significant data, a monthly ISP proxy with unlimited bandwidth may be more predictable than a rotating residential plan billed by the gigabyte

- Controlled browser and application profiles. Teams can assign one ISP proxy to one browser profile, test device, or application environment

Why Use ISP Proxies?

ISP proxies are designed primarily for stability and consistency. They are a strong choice when a workflow requires a persistent ISP-associated IP address, predictable sessions, and a straightforward static-IP rental model.