The Best Proxies for Web Scraping 2024- NetNut

Introduction

As a business owner who makes data-driven decisions, you must realize the significance of proxies for your web-scraping project. Manual web collection that involves copying and pasting has become obsolete because it is time consuming and prone to human error. On the other hand, using a web scraping bot to access and retrieve data is faster and more efficient. 

However, without Proxies, your web scraper may run into some problems like blocks, CAPTCHAs, or restrictions. In addition, you need to choose a reliable proxy provider to ensure your efforts are productive. 

Therefore, this guide will examine the best types of proxies for web scraping as well as factors to consider when choosing a provide

Relationship between Web Scraping and Proxies

Web scraping is the process of collecting data from the web. Web scraping involves using scrapers or bots, to visit a web page, retrieve data, and store it in a local file. The data is often stored in a local file where it can be accessed for analysis and interpretation. Instead of copying and pasting, automating the web scraping process becomes critical when you need to collect a large volume of data within a short time. 

On the other hand, proxies act as an intermediary between your web scraper and the target website. Subsequently, they work by routing your requests through various IP addresses. As a result, proxies help you overcome some of the most common challenges associated with web scraping to ensure uninterrupted access to data.  

Types of Proxies for Web Scraping

Proxies can be categorized into different classes based on their origin. In this section, we shall examine some of the best types of proxies for web scraping. They include:

Residential proxies

Residential proxies are top choices for web scraping as the IP addresses are assigned by the ISP (internet service providers) to residential buildings. When a user connects to a residential proxy, the server route requests through a residential IP. In addition, it handles incoming and outgoing traffic by establishing a connection with the target website. Subsequently, the user request appears to originate from a residential device, thereby masking your actual IP address. 

These proxies are perfect for automation tasks as they can mimic real users and bypass geo-restrictions. Since residential proxies come from real residential devices, they provide high-level anonymity. Therefore, these proxies have a higher chance of accessing blocked content and bypassing restrictions. 

Residential proxies are highly reliable because they can offer precise geo-targeting. When you use residential proxies to send a request, the target website sees it as coming from an actual residential address. Although they are typically more expensive than datacenter proxies, residential proxies are crucial to accessing blocked websites from any part of the world. In addition, residential IPs offer high-level reliability especially when dealing with websites with complex anti-bot detection systems. 

Rotating residential proxies works by automatically changing the IP address after a fixed number of requests have been sent or at predetermined intervals. This rotation plays a significant role in anonymity and makes it difficult for websites to block your IPs. 

Advantages of residential proxies

1. Residential proxies offer the highest level of anonymity as the IPs are assigned by the ISPs.
2. Easily bypass geo-restrictions and CAPTCHA
3. For exclusive performance, users can request for dedicated residential proxies

Disadvantages of residential proxies

1. Residential proxies are expensive
2. Varying speed depending on the quality of the network

Datacenter proxies

A datacenter proxy, like other proxies, acts as a gateway between your device and the website you are visiting. These IPs are not associated with an actual residential address but come from data centers. They are usually hosted on powerful servers, which ensure high speed and reliability. Like other proxy types, they mask your IP address by routing the request through the data center server to minimize the chances of the IP block. 

Datacenter proxies are often used for large-scale web scraping because they are more affordable than residential and mobile proxies. Depending on the data center, these servers usually provide good performance and uptime for data collection. 

Advantages of datacenter proxies

1. They are often cheaper, which makes them excellent for large-scale scraping projects.
2. Datacenter proxies offer high speed, which enhances the efficiency of web scraping activities.
3. They are more available, which makes IP rotation easier.

Disadvantages of datacenter proxies

1. They are easily detectable, which increases the chances of being blocked.
2. Datacenter proxies are often used by multiple users, which may negatively affect performance and reliability.
3. Some websites automatically block requests coming from a datacenter IP address
4. Datacenter proxies offer limited geolocation options. 

Mobile proxies

A mobile proxy is a kind of proxy that routes your network traffic through real mobile devices on cellular networks. Subsequently, your traffic imitates real mobile traffic, which is crucial for bypassing geo-restrictions. Mobile proxies work by interacting with mobile network infrastructures and making it seem like a user is browsing from a mobile device.

Mobile proxies are highly sought after because they are less likely to be detected which makes them an ideal solution for web scraping. Mobile proxies are often pricey because they use mobile networks, which is more expensive to acquire. 

Mobile proxies provide excellent connections because they operate in dedicated mobile networks. Therefore, mobile proxies are great for businesses because they typically offer faster speed than residential proxies. However, they can be affected by several factors like signal strength and network congestion, which cause more variable speeds than residential IPs.

Advantages of mobile proxies

1. Highly trusted IPs that are less likely to be blocked
2. High level of anonymity due to the dynamic nature of mobile IPs
3. Good at handling CAPTCHA challenges

Disadvantages of mobile proxies

1. Mobile proxies are expensive
2. Connection speed varies depending on the mobile network.

Best Tips for Web Scraping with Proxies

Web scraping is crucial to decision-making, but if not done in the right way, it can affect the performance of the target server. Therefore, you need to ensure your web scraping activities remain ethical. Here are some of the best tips for web data extraction with proxies:

Read the terms and conditions

The terms and conditions page is a crucial aspect of a website to explore before web scraping. The web page policy page may contain clear information on which aspect of the website you can scrape. Subsequently, your web scraping may be unethical and illegal if you fail to comply. 

Explore the web page robots.txt

Before you extract data from any website, you need to get familiar with the robot.txt file. It usually contains information that guides you on publicly available data. Therefore, this information can be useful when writing your code to build a web scraper. Failure to comply with the instructions provided in this file can make your activities unethical and illegal. 

Rate-limit

One of the ways websites identify bot traffic is when too many requests are coming from the same IP within a short time. This can cause the server to become slow, malfunction, or even crash. Websites with advanced anti-bot systems can promptly identify this activity and block the IP address. Therefore when scraping with proxies, it is best to implement automatic IP rotation. 

In addition, a rate limit for the number of requests per second should be implemented when writing the web scraping script. Rate limiting is the practice of including a timer that ensures that only a predefined amount of requests are sent with an IP address within a specific time. 

Get familiar with data protection protocols

Many countries are actively making laws to protect the privacy and data security of their citizens. Therefore, you need to understand your state laws and federal laws regarding web scraping. This is necessary to avoid using the data in a way that infringes copyright laws, as this could lead to legal situations. A common law that countries in the European Union must comply with is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This is a strict law that enforces the protection of personal information by preventing the extraction of personal data without consent.

Why Choose NetNut Proxies For Web Scraping

NetNut is an industry-leading proxy provider with over 85 million rotating residential proxies in 195 countries and over 5 million mobile IPs. Apart from the large IP pool that ensures global coverage, NetNut has several other exceptional qualities that make them the perfect solution for your web scraping needs. 

Automated IP rotation

Since NetNut has one of the largest proxy IP pools, they guarantee uninterrupted access to data. Although there are multiple methods of rotating or changing your proxy IP, automated IP rotation is more convenient and significantly reduces the chances of an IP block due to overusing it. Subsequently, NetNut offers automated IP rotation so that users can perform web scraping without the risk of IP bans.  

Automated IP rotation ensures optimal anonymity for any online activity. Therefore, regardless of how many times you send a request to a website, it considers you to be a different visitor. NetNut proxies hide your actual IP address to conceal your digital footprint. 

Anonymity and security

NetNut proxies offer a high degree of anonymity and security. Activities like web scraping require some form of anonymity to prevent an IP ban. If your actual IP is blocked, your access to certain websites including crucial ones becomes challenging. Therefore, NetNut solutions hide your IP address and change other identifying parameters so that passive fingerprinting cannot be established. Subsequently, this optimizes anonymity and security of your online activities. 

Speed and Stability

NetNut proxy servers are among the fastest in the industry. These proxies offer one-hop connectivity, which prevents bottlenecks in traffic flow. In addition, all the traffic is routed via the NetNut network. Therefore, you can carry out your activities without any interruptions that may be experienced when third-party computers are used. Subsequently, this capacity for high performance makes NetNut proxy an excellent choice for various online activities, including gaming, streaming, and web scraping.

Global data access

NetNut proxies ensure global access to data. Since data has become essential for businesses and researchers, global access is essential for comprehensive research and analysis. In addition, access to global data is necessary to obtain comprehensive machine learning data to avoid bias. Therefore, using the NetNut servers ensures you can access data from various locations across the world, including geo-restricted content.

Smart website unblocker

Many websites are blocked for several purposes. It could be due to geographical restrictions, government decisions, or institutional purposes. However, if you need to bypass these kinds of blocks, you need a smart solution. NetNut offers a web unblocker that allows you to bypass such restrictions and obtain data with ease. It works by changing your IP address and using dynamic fingerprinting to imitate real users so you can access any website. 

Advanced AI-CAPTCHA solver

One of the biggest challenges to web scraping is CAPTCHA- a test designed to tell humans apart from bots. Since web scraping requires the use of automated scripts/bots, CAPTCHAs can become quite a menace when extracting data from the web. Bots generally fail the CAPTCHA test, and this triggers an IP ban. However, NetNut solutions come with an advanced AI-CAPTCHA solver. Therefore, your web scraper can easily bypass CAPTCHA with this innovative and powerful machine-learning algorithm.  

Competitive pricing

Free proxies can mask your IP address, but they do not deliver in terms of anonymity and security. Although premium proxies like NetNut come at a cost, they are reliable, and offer high speed and excellent performance. NetNut offers competitive pricing regardless of all its advanced features. You can get proxies that guarantee speed and scalability of your web scraping activity at a fair cost. In addition, new users can enjoy a free 7 day trial when they sign up on the website. 

Conclusion

This guide has examined some of the best proxies for web scraping. Depending on the project size, requirement, and budget, you can use residential, mobile, or data center proxies. These proxies provide an additional level of anonymity and security for your web scraping activities. 

Web scraping is crucial for obtaining data that informs crucial business decisions. However, it must be done ethically and within legal bounds. Therefore, it is essential to read the terms and conditions page, the robots.txt file and get familiar with the laws regarding data collection in your region.

NetNut offers several solutions that ensure you can get uninterrupted access to data. Be sure to check out our in-house solution- NetNut Scraper API for guaranteed web data retrieval at high speed. 

Contact us today to get started.  

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the significance of IP rotation for web scraping?

IP rotation involves changing the IP address used for sending requests to a website at regular intervals. It is crucial for web scraping because it distributes requests across multiple IPs, which reduces the risk of IP bans. In addition, IP rotation optimizes the anonymity and efficacy of web scraping. 

Can I use free proxies for web scraping?

Yes, you can use free proxies for web scraping. However, we do not recommend them as they are associated with several limitations including data breach, security risks, lower reliability, and slower speeds. Therefore, for an optimized web scraping activity, you need premium proxies that offer high-level security, anonymity, and speed. 

Why are residential proxies an ideal choice for web scraping?

Residential proxies use IPs assigned by the ISP and associated with an actual physical address. Therefore, they offer high-level anonymity and are less likely to be blocked as they appear as traffic from a regular user. In addition, residential proxies are ideal for bypassing geo-restricted content to gather unbiased data.