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Residential Proxies Quick Start Guide

Adomas Sulcas

2020-09-298 min read
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Oxylabs offers 100M+ residential proxies from all around the world. Our premium proxy pool is constantly growing and is able to deal with even the most demanding web scraping tasks. Perfect for collecting data from complex targets, it will help you achieve scraping free of CAPTCHAs or blocks.

Curious to learn all about our residential proxies? You’re in the right place. This quick start guide will provide all the information you need to get up and running. Let’s get started!

What you will get with Oxylabs® Residential Proxies

Market-leading proxy pool – we are always expanding our proxy pool to offer the best-in-class scraping experience.

Global coverage – from Jacksonville, Florida to Sydney, Australia, enjoy the widest possible range of locations. 

Exceptional performance – our engineers are hard at work so you could enjoy low response times and a consistently high success rate of up to 99.95%

Some of the fastest proxies – our residential proxies regularly score as the fastest on the market. But don’t take our word for it.

24/7 live support – get help from our proxy experts whenever you need it. Contact us via email at support@oxylabs.io.

Technical features

Universal location support our residential proxies support all possible worldwide city-level locations. Simply specify the city via the city parameter (and add the country via the cc parameter) and you’re good to go. We also support US state and ASN-level targeting.

Sticky IP / sticky session support – the proxies also support sticky sessions of up to 10 minutes by default. You can get even longer sessions of up to 30 minutes (please contact support for this feature). See how to configure sticky sessions in the “Using Residential Proxies” section of this article.

Unlimited concurrent sessions – we do not limit the amount of concurrent connections so you could scale your operation to any size needed.

Dashboard – see your usage statistics, create and manage sub-users or whitelist IPs – do it all easily and in one place.

IP whitelisting – aside from the standard user:password authentication, you can also easily whitelist IPs.

Public API use our API to integrate your residential proxies to any existing infrastructure via the Open API protocol. See the documentation for our Public API here.

Purchase and subscription information

Here you will find all the information in regards to purchasing any of our residential proxy plans and managing your subscription afterwards.

Pricing plans

There are eight monthly subscription pricing plans.

Regular plans available via self-service without KYC (Know Your Customer) process:

  • Pay as you go – $15/GB

  • Starter – $300, 25GB ($12/GB)

  • Advanced – $600, 60GB ($10/GB)

  • Premium – $800, 100GB ($8/GB)

Enterprise plans available via self-service after going through the KYC process:

  • Venture – $1,750, 250GB ($7/GB)

  • Business – $3,000, 500GB ($6/GB)

  • Corporate – $4.000, 1TB ($4/GB)

Enterprise plan available via contacting sales:

  • Custom+ – from $7.500, 2TB ($3.75/GB)

Pay as you go purchasing option is only available for Residential Proxies. Here's all the important information about this plan:

– Price – $15 per GB.

– Minimum amount per top-up – 1 GB.

– Maximum top-up amount per month – 50 GB.

– Non-refundable.

– You can upgrade to one of our subscription plans at any time, and all GBs will be transferred.

Our pricing is based on how much traffic you need on a monthly basis. Aside from this difference, all of the plans support the same features.

Please note that the included data does not roll over to the next month, and each plan has a minimum monthly commitment. You can find the details for each plan here.

Self-service

Our self-service (Fast Checkout) feature is available for four of our Residential Proxies plans – Pay as you go, Starter, Advanced, and Premium. These options become available after registering an account.

You will be able to use our Enterprise plans after passing the KYC verification process and creating your first user (see the “User creation guide”).

Self-service top-up feature

Our self-service users can easily top-up their traffic via the dashboard.

Once you use up 50% of your Residential Proxies traffic, an option to add more traffic will show up. Simply click “add more traffic”, choose how much traffic you would like to add, and continue using our proxies.

To top-up, click on “add more traffic”.

If you have purchased a Starter plan, you can add 5, 10, or 20GB of traffic. Advanced plan subscribers can top-up their traffic with 5, 10, 20, or 50GB. Premium plan subscribers can top-up their traffic with 5, 10, 20, 50, or 100GB.

If you would like to add more traffic than your initial plan (for example, you have a Starter plan but want to add 50GB), you need to contact our support team at support@oxylabs.io.

Please keep in mind that additional traffic does not transfer to the next billing period. 

Self-service plan change feature

With Residential Proxies self-service you can also upgrade your plan if you think the current one is not enough and wish to have more Residential Proxies traffic every month. Or you can downgrade a plan if you think that the current one is a little too big for you. You can find a detailed tutorial on how this works in our blog.

Contacting sales

For any larger plan please click the “Contact sales” button on our homepage. After filling out the inquiry form, one of our sales representatives will contact you with an email, asking for more details about your use case. 

Pro tip: the more information you will provide in these initial stages, the smoother and faster the purchasing process will be.

Managing your subscription

After successfully activating your subscription, you can manage it completely on your own via the dashboard. Simply go to My Account > Billing. Here you will see a quick overview of your active products and will be able to reach your invoices. Now let’s go further to Active Products > Manage subscription (see the screenshot for reference).

After clicking the “Manage subscription” button you will be taken to Cleverbridge, our payment vendor’s site, in which you’ll be able to see even more details including the options to toggle automatic renewal on/off and update your preferred payment option.

Using Residential Proxies

While you can enter specific proxy parameters manually, we highly recommend taking advantage of our Endpoint generator. With this tool, you can effortlessly retrieve a list of endpoints by choosing the parameters you need.

Endpoint generator

To access it, first, you have to log in to the dashboard, then on the left side, select Residential Proxies, and click on Endpoint generator. Then, select the following settings:

Region

This section allows you to select a region for better connectivity. Pick Hong Kong or Beijing if you're connecting from China, or choose Global for the rest of the world.

Authentication method

  1. User authentication — enter your proxy sub-user's credentials.

  2. Whitelisted IPs — the Endpoint generator will take your whitelisted IPs automatically.

Endpoint type

  1. Backconnect entry — a single backconnect proxy enables you to choose city-specific settings via additional parameters in the username. 

  2. Country — it enables you to choose a specific country without additional settings.

Location settings

  1. If previously you chose the Backconnect entry, you can select the precise location of a proxy. Choose the Country, State, or City that you would like to connect to.

  2. If you chose the Country setting, then in this section, you can select the Country you want to connect to.

Session type

  1. Sticky — with the Backconnect entry setting chosen, it will keep the same IP address for up to 30 minutes. You can adjust the duration under the Session time field. If you previously chose the Country setting, it will keep the same IP address for up to 10 minutes.

  2. Rotating — it will use a different IP with each request.

Output format

Here, you can select the format (port or HTTP) in which you’ll receive your endpoints list.

Once you retrieve a list of endpoints, you can use them in your script or our proxy manager for Chrome and Android. You can find more information here on how to use the endpoints. Next, we’ll detail how to create the endpoints manually.

The single backconnect entry and parameters

Our residential IPs originate from internet service providers (ISPs) all around the world. For a convenient and flexible connection method, we recommend using the single backconnect entry. Yet, for maximum flexibility in using our global infrastructure we also offer a variety of other connection modes. Continue reading to learn more.

To connect via the single backconnect entry, use this proxy IP port:

pr.oxylabs.io:7777

Using this connection mode you may choose a specific country, US state or city proxy via additional parameters in the username. This approach also supports session control. Below is a sample credentials structure with only the country and city parameters:

customer-USERNAME-cc-COUNTRY-city-CITY-sessid-abcde12345:PASSWORD

See the list of all the supported parameters and how to use them in our documentation here.

Other connection modes

We also offer a variety of other connection methods (gateways) that will allow you to use our residential proxy network with greater flexibility and efficiency: 

  • The China entry node

  • Randomizing entry points: general and country-specific 

  • The country-specific sticky proxy entry point

You may find detailed information on how to use each one here.

Forming a query with country and city parameters

Let’s take a quick look at how a Shell (cURL) query that uses the cc (country) and city parameters might look like. In this example a query to ipinfo.io is performed from a random IP address from Munich, Germany:

curl -x pr.oxylabs.io:7777 -U "customer-USERNAME-cc-DE-city-munich:PASSWORD" https://ipinfo.io

In our documentation you may also find sample queries for Shell Python, PHP, Java, C# and Ruby languages.

Session control

For session control you simply need to add the sessid flag to your query. Here’s how it works:

  1. Adding sessid means that the IP will not change with the following request

  2. The system keeps the same IP associated with session ID as long as there is some activity.

  3. After 60 seconds of inactivity, the IP is automatically changed to a different one.

  4. If you stop sending requests or the IP address is no longer online, the system will assign a new proxy IP after 60 seconds.

  5. Standard session time is 10 minutes.

For a practical example, see documentation.

Response codes

ResponseDescription
400 Bad RequestA proxy server can return this error code if the request did not contain a host to connect to or if there was a generic error when parsing the HTTP request. Make sure your request is correctly formed and to include the URL in the request. Then, try again.
407 Proxy Authentication RequiredYour request lacks proxy authentication information or username / password is invalid. Include the proxy authorization header in your request and make sure your username and password are correctly formed and then try again.
500 Internal Server ErrorProxy server has encountered an internal error. Please retry the request at a later time.
502 Bad GatewayProxy server received an invalid response from the upstream server. Please retry the request.Response Code 502 signifies that the IP assigned to your session ID is no longer available. If you encounter this error, there are two ways to work around it. The first is to wait for 1 minute and the system will automatically assign a new IP address to your session ID. Another approach is to simply switch to a new session ID (i.e. change the sessid parameter) – this way you will receive a new IP address.
504 Gateway TimeoutProxy server did not receive a response from the upstream server in time. Retry request.
525 No Exit FoundCustom HTTP status code – this means proxy was unable to find an exit node which satisfies the request. Change request filter parameters or try again later.

Integrations

For your convenience we also documented some integrations with third-party software:

FoxyProxy
Multilogin

Proxifier

GitHub

Oxylabs GitHub is the place to go for tutorials on how to scrape websites, use our tools, implement products or integrate them using the most popular programming languages (e.g., C#, GoLang, Java, NodeJs, PHP, Python, Ruby, etc.).

Oxylabs® dashboard for Residential Proxies

Oxylabs dashboard is the place to find everything you need to manage your Oxylabs services. In the case of residential proxies, this is where you’ll find these essential tools: usage statistics, user management and IP whitelisting. Continue reading to find out more about each one.

Statistics

The “Statistics” section allows you to see detailed information on how much traffic you use day-to-day. You can see usage graphs for any selected period and also filter by users or export this data to a .csv file. 

Users (user creation guide)

Under the “users” section you may create and manage users (sub-users). We offer features that allow you to set traffic limits (either monthly or lifetime). And you can also disable a user after it reaches its lifetime limit. Let’s have a quick walkthrough on how to create a new user.

First, click on the “New user” button in the top right corner.

Then, give your user a name and a password. If you wish to set a traffic limit, first tick the checkbox and then choose the limit and the time period.

You may disable users any time after their creation and also modify the limits by clicking the “Edit” button.

Whitelisting

Aside from the usual user:password authentication, we also offer IP whitelisting which allows you to access our residential proxy infrastructure simply by connecting via whitelisted IPs.

You may whitelist up to 10 IPs by default. Add or remove them as a simple text list via the “Edit whitelist” interface (see screenshot below).

Conclusion

We hope the guide answered all the questions you might have had, and you can now see that the robust infrastructure we offer is actually a breeze to use. Yet, we realize that it is nearly impossible to cover all aspects and varying use cases, so if there’s still something you’d like to learn – feel free to contact our support team at any time via email at support@oxylabs.io.


People also ask

Are there any restricted targets?

Yes. To prevent abuse some websites are restricted on our residential proxy network. The list includes, but is not limited to websites such as Google domains including Play.google.com, Linkedin.com, Sonyentertainmentnetwork.com, all Apple domains, including iTunes, Discord.com, Twitch.tv, Neflix.com and some other sites.

What should I do when I reach my traffic limit?

Our self-service users can easily top-up their traffic via dashboard.

If you have a monthly subscription plan (Starter, Business or Corporate), once you use up 50% of your Residential Proxy traffic, an option to add more traffic will show up. Simply click on “add more traffic”, choose how much traffic you would like to add, and continue using our proxies.

If you have purchased a Starter plan, you can add 5, 10, or 20GB of traffic. Business plan subscribers can top up their traffic with 5, 10, 20, or 50GB, while Corporate plan subscribers can top up their traffic with 5, 10, 20, 50, or 100GB.

If you would like to add more traffic than your initial plan, you need to contact our support team at support@oxylabs.io.

Will my unused traffic be transferred to the next month?

No. Monthly data is only valid for that month.

About the author

Adomas Sulcas

PR Team Lead

Adomas Sulcas is a PR Team Lead at Oxylabs. Having grown up in a tech-minded household, he quickly developed an interest in everything IT and Internet related. When he is not nerding out online or immersed in reading, you will find him on an adventure or coming up with wicked business ideas.

All information on Oxylabs Blog is provided on an "as is" basis and for informational purposes only. We make no representation and disclaim all liability with respect to your use of any information contained on Oxylabs Blog or any third-party websites that may be linked therein. Before engaging in scraping activities of any kind you should consult your legal advisors and carefully read the particular website's terms of service or receive a scraping license.

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IN THIS ARTICLE:


  • What you will get with Oxylabs® Residential Proxies

  • Technical features

  • Purchase and subscription information

  • Self-service plan change feature

  • Using Residential Proxies

  • Integrations

  • GitHub

  • Oxylabs® dashboard for Residential Proxies

  • Conclusion

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