Checking Online Shops and Listings from Abroad
Plain-English version: if you sell online, there's more to watch than price. Stock levels, how your listing looks, reviews, who holds the "buy box" (the main add-to-basket button when several sellers offer the same item), delivery options and promotions can all change from one marketplace or country to the next. To see what shoppers in each place see, you have to look from an IP address there, and that's the job proxies do.
Below we match common shop-checking jobs to a proxy type and explain how to collect public information politely, keeping to the marketplace's terms of service and the law of your country. Our proxies for eCommerce page has the product details.
Written and kept up to date by the people who run Budget Proxies. If a step no longer matches what you see on your screen, let us know through the contact page.
What this guide walks you through
- What small sellers usually keep an eye on
- Residential, datacenter or premium for a marketplace?
- Shop-checking jobs side by side
- Checking shops the fair way
- First steps for your shop checks
What small sellers usually keep an eye on
Typical, legitimate things to check:
- Prices and deals on the regional versions of a shop, in each local currency.
- Stock and availability, so you can reorder in time and notice early when an item sells out (a stock-out).
- Listings: whether your titles, photos and descriptions show up correctly.
- Reviews and ratings, to follow how your products, and your rivals' products, are received.
- Brand protection: spotting fakes of your products, or sellers you haven't authorised.
Residential, datacenter or premium for a marketplace?
Big marketplaces tailor their pages heavily by location, and many look closely at traffic from servers. Residential proxies (from $3.98/GB) use real home connections, so they see what a real shopper in that country sees; that makes them the right choice for accurate local prices and well-protected listings. Datacenter proxies (from $2.49/GB) run on server IPs and are the low-cost, quick option for checking lots of pages on lightly protected shops. For the strictest marketplaces there's Residential Premium, our curated residential pool, which improves the share of checks that come back with a proper page.
Shop-checking jobs side by side
Use the table to match what you want to check with a sensible type. Per-request gives each page a new IP, while sticky keeps the same IP for a short run of pages. Rotation is built into every plan.
| Job | Type to pick | Rotation | Why we suggest it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Local prices and deals | Residential | Sticky | An accurate view for a local shopper |
| Checking lots of product pages | Datacenter | Per-request | Low cost and quick for big batches |
| Reviews and listing checks | Residential | Per-request | A real shopper's view of protected pages |
| The toughest marketplaces | Residential Premium | Sticky | Better odds where others struggle |
Checking shops the fair way
Being fair to the marketplace also makes your numbers more accurate:
- Only collect what an ordinary shopper could see, and read the marketplace's terms of service and its robots.txt file (the rules it publishes for automated visitors) before you start.
- Space your requests out (this is called throttling) and use rotation, so no single IP puts strain on the site.
- Set the proxy to the country of the storefront you're checking, so prices and stock come out right.
- Where a marketplace gives sellers official tools, APIs or feeds, use those first, and keep copies of pages instead of fetching them twice.
A proxy won't make a marketplace open its doors; its terms apply whichever IP you use.
First steps for your shop checks
Every order comes with a fixed 30-day validity, connects over HTTP/HTTPS or SOCKS5 (the usual proxy connection types), and lets you log in by username and password or by IP whitelist, where your own address is approved in advance. Locations span 55+ countries and access is instant. A sensible order of play: get a data estimate from the proxy calculator, look over the pricing page, and once the numbers make sense, buy now. If watching rival shops is your main aim, the competitor research page is a good next read.
Questions beginners ask
Not sure what to buy? Start at step 1
Here are our four types, from the lowest price per GB upwards. Try a small amount of the first one that could work for your project, and only move up a step if a quick test lets you down.
Sites without bot protection, big batches of public pages, automation and SEO tools
Protected sites, ad checks, market research and seeing what one place really sees
Apps and platforms built for phones, plus testing your own mobile app
Well-guarded sites, where a better success rate is worth the higher price
Small first order? Datacenter from $2.49/GB · billed on the data you actually move · ready straight away · 30 days to use it · no traffic logs.
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Read the guide →Got a particular job in mind?
Ready to try your first proxy?
Choose from 55+ countries, pay from $2.49/GB for only the data you use, and get your login details straight away. If a step trips you up, human support is there 24/7.
