What are Selenium Proxies?
Selenium proxy is a term used for describing proxy servers you can use together with bots developed with Selenium in other to avoid restrictions and access geo-targeted web content. From the definition, all proxies in the market can be called selenium proxies.
This is because Selenium is used for developing web client software. What should be your focus is the site your want to use proxies for? While some will tell you residential proxies are the proxies for Selenium, it can be arguable that private proxies are good for certain use cases that you will need Selenium too.
What Proxies to Use for Selenium Web Driver?
As stated earlier, you can use residential, mobile, and datacenter proxies — it all depends on your use case. Take, for instance, if you need to scrape data from web pages that require no session; rotating residential proxies are the best. Static residential proxies are perfect for managing accounts on websites with strict anti-spam systems.
For accessing LinkedIn and other hard-to-access sites like Instagram, mobile proxies are the proxies for the job. Some websites with less strict anti-spam systems or tasks that require high speed are best done using private proxies. Sometimes, all you need are proxies with IPs from certain geo-location.
Will Proxies Avoid Blocks When Used with Selenium?
Yes and no; it all depends on your target website and use case. Generally, proxies will only protect against IP tracking and blocking. For websites that depend on only this to track users, Selenium, together with proxies, is unstoppable.
However, if your task requires access to sites that have strong anti-spam systems like Cloudflare, Akamai, and PerimeterX, then proxies alone won’t help you. You will need to use other tools and techniques to bypass these systems.
Conclusion
Selenium is some of the tools that help bot developers to automate their tasks easily. While the tool itself is good, there are instances where you will need to make use of proxies. If you are in such situations, the proxy providers listed above are some of the best to buy Selenium proxies from.