Market research and data collection · Residential recommended

Proxies for market research, local data, at research scale.

Research datasets are only as good as their coverage: a job board seen from one country, a review site that hides half its pages from foreign visitors, a real-estate portal that throttles after a hundred pages. Country-by-country residential collection gives complete, comparable data; datacenter exits handle the sources that do not care who is asking.

Get started See the recipe
  • $2.45GBResidential proxies, our recommendation for this job
  • $667.57per monthEstimate for 2,000,000 documents at 250 KB each
  • 24 hstickyHold a pool exit from a minute to a day when the flow needs it
  • ∞threadsNo concurrency cap on any network; pace per domain yourself

01 — Which network

Residential proxies first. Here is the reasoning for all four.

A recommendation is only useful with its trade-offs. The cards below say what each network does well for market research and data collection, and where it stops being worth the money.

Residential proxies

Recommended

Complete local coverage of protected or geo-gated sources, one market at a time, with rotation for volume.

$2.45/GBnever expires · same rate worldwide
Residential proxies

Datacenter proxies

Recommended

Bulk collection from open sources, public APIs and archives at the lowest cost per request.

$0.70/IP/mo90-day term, reference zone · unlimited threads
Datacenter proxies

ISP proxies

Possible

For sources that require a stable authenticated session over long crawls.

$0.99/IP/mo90-day term, reference zone · unlimited threads
ISP proxies

Mobile proxies

Possible

Only for mobile-exclusive sources and app content.

$2.62/GBrotating · devices priced by country
Mobile proxies

02 — The recipe

How to configure it.

The settings that matter for market research and data collection, and a working example on the right. Replace USER and PASS with the credentials issued at signup.

Split by source
Datacenter for open sources, residential for guarded or geo-gated ones; one account, both networks.
Targeting
-cc- per market; collect each country from inside it for comparable samples.
Rotation
Rotating for breadth; sticky when pagination depends on a session cookie.
Storage
Keep raw HTML with exit metadata; re-parsing later is cheaper than re-crawling.
Python 
import requests

OPEN   = "http://USER:[email protected]:8000"              # dedicated datacenter IP, bulk sources
GUARDED = "http://USER-cc-{cc}:[email protected]:9000"  # residential, geo-gated sources

def fetch(url, market=None):
    proxy = GUARDED.format(cc=market) if market else OPEN
    return requests.get(url, proxies={"http": proxy, "https": proxy}, timeout=30).text
cc
Country of the exit; add city or asn to narrow.
sid
Any string you choose; requests with the same session ID share one IP.
ttl
How long the session holds the IP, up to 24h; omit to rotate per request.

03 — Budget

What market research and data collection costs at your volume.

Per-GB pricing is predictable once you know your page size. Enter your monthly volume; the average size is pre-filled with a realistic figure for this job and can be changed.

documents
KB

average document (HTML or JSON)

Traffic476.8 GBper month
Rate$1.40per GB on the residential ladder
Estimated cost$667.57traffic never expires

Residential rate ladder, identical in every country. Buying the month's traffic in one purchase reaches the tier shown; smaller top-ups are priced at their own tier. Full ladder.

04 — Best practices

Where market research and data collection goes wrong, and how not to.

The pool is rarely the problem. These four habits decide the success rate and the bill.

Route by protection, not by habit

Every source on residential wastes money; every source on datacenter loses coverage. Classify once.

Sample per market from inside it

Cross-country comparisons need each country collected locally.

Respect rates and terms

Research is not a licence to overload a site; pace per domain and honour robots.txt where it applies.

Mind personal data

Collect what you have a lawful basis for and minimize the rest.

05 — Questions

Straight answers about proxies for market research and data collection.

Residential or datacenter for datasets?

Both: datacenter for open sources at $0.80 per IP with 100 GB pooled each month, residential for guarded or geo-gated ones per GB. Route each source to the cheapest network that succeeds.

How much does a two-million-document crawl cost?

At 250 KB per document that is about 500 GB. On residential the 500 GB tier is $1.19 per GB, about $595; on datacenter, five IPs pool 500 GB a month for around $4.

Can I collect data for AI training?

Collecting public data is allowed within the acceptable use policy and the law that applies to you and the source. Personal data, paywalled content and sites that prohibit it are your responsibility to exclude.

Do you cap concurrency?

No. Unlimited threads on every network; per-domain politeness is on you.

Ready when you are

Run market research and data collection on the right network today.

Create your account, top up $10 and try the recipe above on your real target. What you do not use stays on your balance.

Create an account Residential proxies