What’s the Best Way to Build and Maintain a Reliable Web Scraping Proxy Pool?

Man, web scraping proxy pools can be such a pain. I’ve tried free proxies, and they’re just not worth it. I switched to Luminati (now Bright Data), and it’s been a lifesaver.

For bans, I’d recommend using a mix of residential and datacenter proxies. It’s a bit pricier, but it reduces the chances of getting blocked.

Also, don’t forget to monitor your pool regularly. I use ProxyCheck to test them every hour.

Hey! I’m kinda new to this too, but I’ve found that using ScraperAPI makes things way easier. They handle all the proxy rotation and ban evasion for you.

For free proxies, I’d say avoid them unless you’re just testing. They’re way too unreliable for anything serious.

As for long-term maintenance, I’d recommend setting up a cron job to test your proxies daily. It’s saved me a lot of trouble.