Selenium Proxies

As mentioned earlier, Selenium is used to automate browser tasks. Some of the functionality involved includes web scraping and automation. So, where exactly do proxies come in?

A proxy is designed to act as a middleman between your device and the server, app, or service you are trying to access. This way, all your web traffic is rerouted through the proxy server using an alternate IP address. The outcome? You get to enjoy a wide range of benefits such as improved privacy and bypassing IP bans.

While web automation and scraping are legal, they are not accepted on most websites. Most online platforms have strict mechanisms that can detect and block non-human traffic. Therefore, you need to implement countermeasures to ensure you evade detection while performing web automation tasks using Selenium. This is where proxies come in handy. Using these tools, you can assign a different IP address to each request or a series of requests, making it seem like they are coming from different devices. This way, you can evade detection and perform your automation tasks without worrying about interruptions.

Now that you know why you need proxies, what about the type of proxy server? Which type best fits Selenium use?

The usage scenario will influence the type of proxy you implement for Selenium. Web scraping and automation are the most common reasons someone might want to use this tool. With this in mind, rotating datacenter proxies are recommended since they have an advantage of speed compared to residential proxies.

In addition to offering faster speeds, rotating proxies utilize a pool of IPs assigned to a series of web requests. The benefit? You will not bypass the request limit placed by most websites since the proxy will switch your IP after every few requests. Hence, you can perform your web automation tasks using Selenium without worrying about getting detected and banned.

IPRoyal is a market-leading proxy provider with robust solutions capable of avoiding detection. Get in touch today to see why different types of clients all over the world successfully use our state-of-the-art proxy services for their web scraping projects!