What is a Web Scraping Proxy?

A web scraping proxy is a server that serves as a middleman between a web scraper and the target website. It forwards the requests from the scraper to the website while pretending to be anything but the actual scraper's IP address and location. This allows the scraper to gain access to the data without actually revealing its own identity, thus reducing the chances of being detected and subsequently blocked by anti-scraping measures.

Web scraping proxies are important to preserve anonymity, access world-wide geo-restricted content, and scale efficiently during a data collection project. Such types include residential and datacenter proxies, each with their own pros and cons in terms of legitimacy, speed, and price.