What are Proxy APIs?
Proxy APIs are web service that acts as proxy servers but do more than just providing you IP addresses or even rotating them. Proxy APIs take the responsibility of making sure your web requests are successful and do not experience blocks.
In fact. There are some proxy APIs that would only charge you for successful requests. Aside from handling proxies, Proxy APIs also bypasses or solve Captchas and also take care of other anti-scraping bypassing techniques.
Why Use Proxy APIs?
Compared to regular proxies, proxy APIs are a new invention that has been designed to be used in situations that proxy usage was not helpful. Even with the use of proxies, inexperienced web scrapers will still find it difficult to scrape websites as such sites use more than just IP addresses to detect bot actions.
If you are an inexperienced developer whose bot keeps getting blocked even when using proxies, then it is time to switch over to using proxy APIs instead of regular proxy services. Experienced developers can also benefit from using them as they can delegate avoiding blocks to the proxy APIs while focusing on other things that matter.
How Do Proxy APIs Work?
Proxy APIs work just like regular proxies as they sit between your computer and web servers on the Internet. However, proxy APIs are not configured the same way regular proxies are. In fact, some proxy APIs work as RESTFUL APIs that accepts your target URL as a parameter. When you send a request, the proxy API server decodes the request and extracts the URL and POST data in other to send it to the intended server.
While doing so, it makes sure IPs are rotated, and if Captchas appear, it gets them solved or bypassed. If successful, it sends the HTML of the page back for you to parse.
What are the Best Proxy APIs in the Market?
The above is a list of proxy APIs that work. However, if we are to recommend you the best proxy APIs in the market, then our top 3 picks include ScraperAPI, ScrapingBee, and Zyte.