Can someone explain the key differences between forward proxy vs reverse proxy? or Forward proxy vs r

The real-world gotcha with forward proxies? Free ones are often slow or sketchy. Paid ones are better but cost $$$.

Reverse proxies? If you don’t set up caching right, your site will crawl.

For tools, Nginx is the GOAT for reverse proxy, and Storm Proxies is decent for forward proxy scraping.