Web Scraping the Polite Way: Habits to Learn Early
Something beginners often don't expect: the scraping that keeps working is the polite kind. People who collect data smoothly for months follow each site's rules, take their time and use suitable tools; pushing as hard as possible is what gets a scraper stopped. What follows is a practical checklist for collecting public data well, with proxies as the part that keeps things reliable as you grow.
It all assumes you're doing this legitimately: public data only, each website's terms of service, robots.txt rules and the law respected, and the understanding that no proxy can promise access. Not sure which IPs to buy? Our guide to choosing proxies for web scraping walks you through it.
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
- First, check the rules
- Take it slowly and rotate IPs
- Choose a suitable proxy and save what you fetch
- Four small choices to make when you write the scraper
- Putting the checklist to work
First, check the rules
Start every project by reading the site's terms of service and its robots.txt file, which says what automated visitors may fetch. Check, too, whether the site publishes its own API or a data feed. If it does, use that; it's tidier and more dependable than picking data out of HTML. Keep to public data, and if a site restricts access, leave it there. That keeps your project legitimate and lets it last.
Take it slowly and rotate IPs
Going too fast is the classic way scraping projects come unstuck. These habits keep you gentle on the site:
- Slow down and vary the pause between requests, and limit how many run at once.
- Rotate your IPs with rotating proxies, so no single address carries much of the work.
- Use sticky sessions, which keep one IP for a while, for tasks with several steps that a site expects to come from one visitor.
- Back off when errors appear, waiting longer before each retry instead of trying again straight away.
Choose a suitable proxy and save what you fetch
Match the proxy to the site: datacenter IPs from server companies for lightly protected sites, residential IPs from home connections for protected or location-specific ones. Save (cache) pages as you go, so unchanged pages never get downloaded twice; that lightens the load on the site and trims your bill too. You'll find the whole checklist summed up in the table.
| Habit | Why it helps |
|---|---|
| Read the terms & robots rules first | Keeps your project legitimate and in bounds |
| Try the official API first | Usually tidier than picking data out of HTML |
| Slow down and vary your pace | The site isn't overloaded |
| Rotate across many IPs | Each address makes only a few requests |
| Match the proxy type to the site | A good success rate without overspending |
| Save pages that haven't changed | Lighter on the site and on your wallet |
| Timeouts and retries with backoff | Runs that cope without hammering the site |
Four small choices to make when you write the scraper
Each of these makes your scraper sturdier and kinder to the site:
- Use timeouts, and back off before retrying, so a brief failure doesn't wreck the whole job.
- Be upfront about who you are: where it's appropriate, name your scraper honestly, and include a way to contact you if you collect a lot.
- Stay calm about errors: note them in a log, move on to the next page, and don't bombard the site with retries.
- Use plain HTTP instead of a headless browser (a browser run by a program, with no window) unless you really need JavaScript to run; it saves data.
To understand what each error means, read our beginner's guide to proxy error codes.
Putting the checklist to work
When you're ready to put the checklist into practice, our proxies cover the basics it relies on. The pools are ethically sourced, run with 99.9% uptime and keep no traffic logs. You can connect over HTTP/HTTPS or SOCKS5, log in with a username and password or an IP whitelist, choose from 55+ countries and start straight away. The proxy calculator turns your plan into a data estimate, the pricing page shows what each type costs, and buy now takes you to the order page.
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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