Start Using Web Stealth Proxy like a Pro: Quick Start Guide

Mihai Maxim on Feb 20 2023

Web Stealth Proxy is an ML-powered proxy solution that bypasses sophisticated anti-bot systems and allows you to scrape any website. With Web Stealth Proxy, all you have to do is send one request. Our system will take care of the rest. Thanks to its advanced technologies and techniques, Web Stealth Proxy is able to stay one step ahead of the blocks and adapt to constantly changing site restrictions. This means you can trust that your scraping process will remain smooth and uninterrupted, allowing you to extract the data you need to succeed.

Are you ready to take your web scraping game to the next level? This quick start guide has everything you need to get started with Web Stealth Proxy.

What does Web Stealth Proxy have to offer?

Block-free scraping - our smart IP rotation algorithm ensures that your IP address is not blocked or rate-limited

Scrape like a real user - give your scraping requests an organic feel with the help of proxies, dynamic fingerprinting, and custom cookies

Extract localised data anywhere in the world - collect localized data without blocks using Web Stealth Proxy's 195 countries and 100M+ unique IPs

24/7 live support - get professional assistance from our Customer Support Team at any time

Seamless integration - easily integrate Web Stealth Proxy into your existing code with a single-entry proxy-like system

Technical features

ML-driven proxy management - selects the best possible proxy pool for your target website.

Dynamic fingerprinting - automatically picks the right headers, cookies, browser attributes, and proxies to mimic genuine user behavior and mask your bot’s identity.

Auto-retry functionality - selects new parameters and resends the request in case of failure.

JavaScript rendering - our headless browsers load the full contents of the web page and enable you to scrape dynamic websites with ease.

Session control - switch between different IPs for every request or maintain the same IP for up to 5 minutes.

Purchase and subscription information

Web Stealth Proxy makes it easy for you to plan your scraping projects. We provide five different plans based on the number of successful requests made through the proxy.

Free Trial - 10, 000 requests

Starter - 250 000 requests

Grow - 500 000 requests

Business - 1 000 000 requests

Pro - 2 000 000 requests

More information about each plan is available here.

Using Web Stealth Proxy

Making requests with Web Stealth Proxy is easy, especially if you have previously used regular proxies for web scraping. Please note that you will have to disable the SSL certificates verification (-k switch in cURL, verify=false in Python etc.)

Web Stealth Proxy is available via:

HTTPS at stealthproxy.webscrapingapi.com:8000
HTTP at stealthproxy.webscrapingapi.com:80

Your Web Stealth Proxy credentials are stored in the Start Here section of the Web Stealth Proxy service page.

Here’s an example of a simple request using cURL:

curl -k -x "http://stealthproxy.webscrapingapi.com:80" \

-U "<YOUR_PROXY_USERNAME>:<YOUR_PROXY_PASSWORD>" \

-X GET "https://httpbin.org/get" 

You don’t have to specify any parameters. Our system will add all standard headers, select the fastest proxy and deliver the response to you. To use more advanced features, such as choosing a specific proxy location or using the same IP for multiple requests, you can include additional headers in your request.

You can find more code samples in our documentation.

Geo-location settings

Web Stealth Proxy allows you to send the request from different countries, by passing the X-WSA-Geo-Location header to your request.

Here is how you can send a request from an IP address located in Germany:

curl -k -x "http://stealthproxy.webscrapingapi.com:80" \

-U "<YOUR-PROXY-USERNAME>:<YOUR-PROXY-PASSWORD>" \

-X GET "https://httpbin.org/get" \

--header "X-WSA-Geo-Location: de"

Here you can find the complete list of all the supported geo-locations.

Session control

You can create and use a new session in order to scrape multiple pages of the same website and reuse the same proxy (IP Address) for each request. To use the same IP, simply add the X-WSA-Session-ID header with any integer value of your choice. The value will be used to identify the new session created by you:

curl -k -x "http://stealthproxy.webscrapingapi.com:80" \

-U "<YOUR-PROXY-USERNAME>:<YOUR-PROXY-PASSWORD>" \

-X GET  "https://httpbin.org/get" \

--header "X-WSA-Session: 1234" 

Your sessions will expire 5 minutes after the last usage.

More code samples in other languages can be found here.

Custom headers

Custom HTTP headers are useful when you want to provide additional information to your request. If your request requires passing custom HTTP headers, all you have to do is to append WSA- to your header's name and add them to your request:

curl -k -x "http://stealthproxy.webscrapingapi.com:80" \

-U "<YOUR-PROXY-USERNAME>:<YOUR-PROXY-PASSWORD>" \

-X GET  "https://httpbin.org/get" \

--header "WSA-random-header: random" \

--header "WSA-User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64)"

Follow this link to find code examples in other languages.

Custom cookies

You can also set custom cookies for the target website. Custom cookies are treated just as custom headers. In order to add your own cookie to the request, simply pass the name and value to the WSA-Cookie custom header when you send your request:

curl -k -x "http://stealthproxy.webscrapingapi.com:80" \

-U "<YOUR-PROXY-USERNAME>:<YOUR-PROXY-PASSWORD>" \

-X GET "https://httpbin.org/get" \

--header "WSA-Cookie: SID=abcd"

More code examples in different languages can be found here.

JavaScript Rendering and Screenshots

Web Stealth Proxy uses headless browsers to render the complete contents of any web page and return you the resulting HTML. Add the X-WSA-Render: screenshot to receive a screenshot of the page. The request will return a JSON object containing the base64 encrypted image:

curl -k -x "http://stealthproxy.webscrapingapi.com:80" \

-U "<YOUR-PROXY-USERNAME>:<YOUR-PROXY-PASSWORD>" \

-X GET "https://httpbin.org/get" \

--header "X-WSA-Render: screenshot"

Click here to find code samples in other programming languages.

POST requests

Do you need to send some data to the targeted website? Web Stealth Proxy supports both POST and PUT requests.

curl -k -x "http://stealthproxy.webscrapingapi.com:80"\

-U "<YOUR-PROXY-USERNAME>:<YOUR-PROXY-PASSWORD>" \

-X POST "https://httpbin.org/get" \

--data '{"foo":"bar"}'

You can find more code samples for different programming languages here.

Usage and Statistics

You can view your credit usage at any time by visiting the Statistics section of the Web Stealth Proxy service page:

You will be charged with only 1 credit per successful request. A request is considered successful if it returns a 200 status code.

Conclusion

Web Stealth Proxy is ideal for web scraping tasks. Instead of manually handling CAPTCHAs, blocks, and other restrictions, Web Stealth Proxy takes care of the unblocking process for you with a high success rate (usually 100%).

If you have any additional questions about the Web Stealth Proxy or need assistance using it, our support team is here to help. Reach out to us anytime through live chat or email, and we'll be happy to provide the guidance you need.