The countdown
Not everyone needs a proxy. But if any of these sound familiar, one will probably save you time, money or both.
10. You need to test your site from another country
Your geo-redirects, prices and consent banners only show up for foreign visitors. A proxy per market lets you check them yourself. See geo-targeted proxies.
9. Your scraper's IP gets banned overnight
If one server IP does all the work, one ban stops everything. See how to avoid IP bans.
8. You see "429 Too Many Requests"
You are hitting rate limits. Slow down first; then spread polite traffic across more IPs. See what 429 means.
7. CAPTCHAs on every page
Your IP's reputation is poor, usually because it is a datacenter or shared IP. See CAPTCHAs and proxies.
Proxy tip: If you want to try these ideas on a real network, Geonode sells pay-as-you-go residential bandwidth that doesn't expire, so a small balance is enough to experiment with rotation, sticky sessions and geo-targeting. See our Geonode proxies guide for how its products fit together.
6. You manage accounts for several clients
Keeping each client's accounts on their own IP and browser profile avoids one problem spreading to all. See social media management proxies.
5. Prices or search results look different for your customers
Rank trackers and price monitors need to see what locals see. See SEO proxies.
4. You are checking ads in other markets
Confirming your ads run, and are not hijacked, in each region needs local IPs. See ad verification proxies.
3. Your crawler needs to be faster
More IPs means more polite parallel requests without hammering any single limit. See web scraping proxies.
2. You are building an AI agent that browses
Agents that read the live web hit the same blocks scrapers do. See AI agents and proxies.
Budget tip: If you want a cheap proxy to try this with, Webshare has a free plan with 10 datacenter proxies and 1 GB of bandwidth a month, no card required. Paid lists let you pick proxy count, bandwidth and location. See Webshare's free proxy plan.
1. You keep thinking "I wish I could see this as someone else"
That is literally what a proxy does. Start with a free trial and our beginner's guide.
And the one sign you don't
You just want privacy on public Wi-Fi. A reputable VPN is the better tool for protecting one device. See is a proxy the same as a VPN?
Residential tip: Rayobyte is worth testing when you need precise targeting: its residential proxies can be pinned to a country, state, city, ZIP code or ASN, with sticky sessions from 1 to 120 minutes. More in choosing the right Rayobyte product.
Learn more
- Best proxies for beginners
- How to choose a proxy provider
- Top 10 ways proxies are used
- Top 10 proxy myths
- RFC 6585, the 429 status code
- CAPTCHA history
- W3C internationalization
- EFF on choosing a VPN
Sources and further reading
Independent references that back up the points above, from standards bodies, governments, universities and non-profits. They open in a new tab.
- RFC 6585: Additional HTTP Status Codes (429 Too Many Requests) (IETF / RFC Editor): Defines status 429, the code sites send when you make too many requests.
- CAPTCHA (Wikipedia): The history of CAPTCHA challenges, from Carnegie Mellon to today.
- Internationalization (W3C): W3C resources on building sites that work across languages and regions.
- Choosing the VPN That's Right for You (Electronic Frontier Foundation): The EFF's guide to what VPNs do and do not protect, which also applies to proxies.
- 429 Too Many Requests (MDN Web Docs (Mozilla)): What a 429 response means and how servers use it.
- Carrier-grade NAT (Wikipedia): How mobile carriers share one public IP between many users.
- Glossary: Virtual Private Network (NIST CSRC): NIST's definition of a VPN, for comparison with a proxy.
Editorial note: Proxy providers change their pools, features and prices often, so treat any figures here as typical ranges at the time of writing and confirm current terms with the provider before you buy.