Top 10 Ways Proxies Are Used (2026 Countdown)

Top 10 Ways Proxies Are Used illustration: from price monitoring to AI training data, here are the ten biggest real-world jobs proxies do, counted down from number 10 to the use that drives the most traffic 3jdej38j4

The countdown

Most proxy traffic is not about hiding. It is businesses looking at the public web the way their customers in other places see it, at a scale no single IP could manage. Here are the ten jobs that keep proxy networks busy, from number 10 up.

10. Sneaker and limited-release drops

Sneaker bots enter raffles and race through checkouts for limited drops, and each task needs its own clean IP so the store does not see 200 entries from one address. It is a small slice of total traffic but the noisiest corner of the industry. See sneaker proxies.

And now, the countdown (animated GIF) 3jdej38j4 — And now, the countdown. GIF via GIPHY

9. Gaming and region checks

Players and studios use proxies to test matchmaking regions, check regional store prices and reduce routing problems. Low latency matters most here, so datacenter and ISP proxies win.

8. Localization and QA testing

Product teams load their own site as a visitor in Japan, Brazil or Germany to check language, currency, consent banners and geo-redirects. One proxy per market turns a week of guessing into an afternoon of checking. See geo-targeted proxies.

Agencies running many client accounts keep each one on its own consistent IP, usually paired with an antidetect browser, so a problem with one account does not spill over to the others. See social media management 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. Brand protection

Brands hunt for counterfeit listings, trademark misuse and unauthorised resellers across marketplaces worldwide, which means browsing those marketplaces from the countries where the fakes are sold. See brand protection proxies.

Investigating the web, one region at a time (animated GIF) 3jdej38j4 — Investigating the web, one region at a time. GIF via Tenor

5. Ad verification

Advertisers and verification firms load pages as real users in each target market to confirm their ads appear, look right and are not being hidden or swapped by fraudsters. See ad verification proxies.

4. SEO and rank tracking

Search results change from city to city. Rank trackers query search engines through local proxies so agencies see exactly what customers in Leeds or Los Angeles see. See SEO proxies.

3. AI training data and AI agents

Large language models and AI agents need fresh, diverse public web data. Collecting it at scale, politely and from many locations, is one of the fastest-growing uses of residential and datacenter proxies. See AI training data 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.

2. Price monitoring and e-commerce intelligence

Retailers, brands and marketplaces track millions of competitor prices, stock levels and promotions every day. Prices often differ by region, so the data must be collected from each one. See price monitoring proxies.

Checking prices in every country at once (animated GIF) 3jdej38j4 — Checking prices in every country at once. GIF via Tenor

1. Web scraping in general

Almost everything above is a flavour of the number one use: collecting publicly available web data automatically. Proxies keep each IP under rate limits, unlock geo-specific content and stop one block from halting the whole job. Done ethically, with respect for robots.txt and site load, it powers price comparison, research, journalism and search itself. See web scraping proxies.

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

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.

Web scraping (Wikipedia): Encyclopedia overview of web scraping techniques and legal history.
Automated Threats to Web Applications (OWASP): OWASP's catalogue of automated threats, including scraping and scalping, as site owners see them.
Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales (US Census Bureau): Official US e-commerce sales data, the market price monitoring watches.
Common Crawl (Common Crawl Foundation): The open web crawl that many AI training datasets are built from.
Trademarks (World Intellectual Property Organization): WIPO's guide to trademarks, the rights brand protection monitoring defends.
Introduction to robots.txt (Google Search Central): Google's own guide to how it reads robots.txt.
429 Too Many Requests (MDN Web Docs (Mozilla)): What a 429 response means and how servers use it.

Affiliate disclosure: Team of Monkeys is an affiliate of Geonode, Webshare and Rayobyte. Links and banners marked as sponsored, and links to Geonode, Webshare and Rayobyte in the text, use our referral links, and we may earn a commission if you buy through them, at no extra cost to you. Our explanations and comparisons are written to be useful whichever provider you choose.

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.