On this page
- The right proxy for the actual job
- Proxy type deep-dives
- Data & research
- E-commerce & retail
- Marketing & SEO
- Social & automation
- Type → use-case cheat sheet
- Rotation cheat sheet
- Budgeting a use case
- The 30-minute pilot method
- Compliance baseline
- Tooling that pairs well
- The metrics that matter
- Practitioner feedback
- Further reading
- Use-case FAQ
- Add a geography
- Equip the job
The right proxy for the actual job
“Best proxy” is meaningless without a job attached. These 40 playbooks each map one task — scraping, drops, audits, monitoring — to the proxy type, rotation mode and vendors that fit it, with costs and pitfalls included.
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Browse by category, or start from the type guides if you’re still choosing infrastructure.
Proxy type deep-dives
Data & research
E-commerce & retail
Marketing & SEO
Social & automation
Type → use-case cheat sheet
Residential: protected retail, social platforms, ad verification. Datacenter: bulk crawls of tolerant targets, monitoring, aggregation. ISP: logged-in accounts, long sessions, stable identities. Mobile: the hardest apps and platforms, last-resort access.
Rotation cheat sheet
Per-request rotation: stateless fetching — crawls, monitors, aggregation. Sticky sessions (1–30 min): anything with a login, cart or multi-page flow. Mixed: discovery on rotation, verification on sticky. Each playbook states its mode so you never guess.
Budgeting a use case
Most playbooks on this page run on single-digit gigabytes monthly at light scale — under $10 at value rates. Sustained operations land in the tens of GB. Page weight and retry rate move spend more than request count, which is why every guide pushes success rate as the lever to manage first.
The 30-minute pilot method
Before committing to any playbook’s vendor pick: claim a trial, replicate one real task at one-tenth volume, and log success, latency and effective cost. Thirty minutes of evidence converts every recommendation here from “trust us” to “verified on my targets”.
Compliance baseline
Every playbook assumes the same floor: publicly available data only, polite request rates, respect for site terms and applicable privacy law (GDPR/CCPA where personal data appears), and consent-sourced IPs from the vendor side. Where a use case has sharper edges, its guide says so explicitly.
Tooling that pairs well
These guides are tool-agnostic: gateway-plus-credentials access works identically from Python (requests, httpx, Scrapy), Node, headless browsers (Playwright, Puppeteer) or no-code schedulers. Protocol notes — HTTP(S) versus SOCKS5 — appear in each playbook’s configuration section.
The metrics that matter
Track three numbers per use case: success rate (target 97%+), p95 latency (sets your throughput ceiling), and cost per successful request (the only honest price). Every playbook’s vendor table is sorted by the third.
Practitioner feedback
"Moved our travel-fare crawlers over a weekend using the setup steps. Throughput doubled at half the spend."
"Honest rankings without the affiliate fluff. The comparison tables saved me a week of vendor calls."
"Procurement loved the price; engineering loved the success rate. First vendor decision nobody argued about."
Further reading
Use-case FAQ
My use case isn’t listed — now what?
Pick the playbook closest in shape (volume, login requirements, geo-sensitivity) and the guidance transfers. Or email us — popular requests become new guides.
Do these recommendations favour one vendor?
They favour the benchmark: our #1 wins most playbooks because it wins most tests, but premium and niche picks appear wherever data supports them.
Are these guides legal advice?
No — they cover lawful collection practices generally; consult counsel for jurisdiction-specific questions.
Add a geography
Most jobs have a “where”. Combine any playbook with a country guide to nail the market-specific details.
Equip the job
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