Craigslist Proxies: Residential, Mobile or Datacenter?

Residential for a desktop browser, mobile for the Craigslist app, with one sticky IP per account in the listings' city. Datacenter and VPN IPs are the ones Craigslist blocks most often. The fit column is our assessment; Craigslist publishes no list of allowed IP types.

ISP proxies are sold in the countries their order form lists, which follow stock. See Residential proxies, Mobile proxies, Static residential (ISP) proxies and, for other jobs, Datacenter proxies.

Partly: datacenter IPs ($0.29 down to $0.22/GB) load logged-out listings; log in and post on residential ($2.95 down to $1.95/GB), or on a dedicated ISP IP (from $2.29 per IP / 30 days) for one account over weeks. Craigslist's terms of use (last updated August 16, 2019) do not mention proxies, VPNs or IP types at all, so Craigslist does not formally let only residential and mobile IPs through, and a datacenter IP can often load public listing pages. But hosting ranges are public, they are the first ones Craigslist challenges or blocks, and an account that logs in from a server IP starts at a disadvantage (our assessment). What the terms do address applies to every IP type: bypassing moderation ($4 per violation in their liquidated damages) and requesting more than 1,000 pages in 24 hours ($0.25 per page after the first 1,000).

Fit by type (our assessment; Craigslist publishes no list of allowed IP types):

Datacenter is the cheaper traffic, but for an account you post from, the residential price buys the better fit. Neither type gets a non-compliant ad accepted.

Yes. ProxyField sells residential proxies with city targeting in 2,800+ US cities and all 50 US states (21,000+ cities worldwide), set in the username, from $2.95 for 1 GB; country, region and city targeting cost the same per GB, so picking the city adds nothing to the price: 10 GB costs $27.90 and 100 GB $249.00 whether you target the US or one city. One Craigslist site per post is Craigslist's own rule (posting locations), so pick the one city your listings and your business are in.

Match the proxy city to the Craigslist site. Craigslist's help pages say its "sites are based on geographic location", that "it is not possible to post to more than one site at a time" and that "the site location for a posting cannot be changed" (posting locations). So:

1. Choose the one Craigslist site for the area your business serves.
2. Set a proxy city inside that site's area in the username.
3. Run the IP check below and confirm the city before you log in.

Craigslist site → proxy city → username. Names are lowercase with underscores (city-new_york), the state goes in -region-, and the country is its two-letter code. new_york is a confirmed key; for the other sites, find the city in the full city list in your dashboard and put its key in place of <city>. If a city is not in the list, the gateway answers 502 rather than using a nearby city; use the state alone (-region-) instead.

Check the city before you log in. Send one request through the line you will use and read the location it reports:

curl -x gate.proxyfield.io:7000 -U "<login>-country-us-city-new_york:<password>" https://ipinfo.io/json

Expected output (shortened; the IP and the provider will differ):

{
  "ip": "203.0.113.24",
  "city": "New York City",
  "region": "New York",
  "country": "US",
  "org": "AS0000 Example Home Internet Provider"
}

Go ahead if city and region match your Craigslist site and org names a home internet provider, not a hosting company. IP-location databases do not always agree, so a neighboring town in the same metro area is normal; a different state is not.

As a full proxy line (host:port:username:password), with a sticky session for one account:

gate.proxyfield.io:7000:<login>-country-us-city-new_york-session-acct1-ttl-3600:<password>

Posting for a whole state? Leave the city out and keep the state: <login>-country-us-region-texas gives Texas IPs in any city. Use it only when your Craigslist site covers a wide area; for a city site, the city line is the closer match.

ZIP (postcode) and ASN targeting are not offered; the city is the finest location level.

Craigslist also runs city sites outside the US (its list of sites includes London, Berlin and Paris), so the same setup works there with country-gb, country-de or country-fr. You do not need a proxy just to browse listings in another city: every city site is open to visitors from anywhere.

A proxy is a network setting, not a posting tool. Craigslist's posting rules ask you to "post only to the single geographic area closest to you or your item/offering" and to "post each item/offering no more than once every 48 hours"; overposting, spam and non-local ads are listed reasons for removal (why posts are removed). Its terms of use forbid bypassing its moderation. ProxyField's acceptable use policy forbids spam as well.

What a proxy is good for when you post:

What it is not for: posting the same ad in many cities, reposting faster than the rules allow, or returning after Craigslist has blocked an account. Those get ads removed through Craigslist's own filters and user flags, and they are not allowed through ProxyField.

Ghosting and flagging. A ghosted ad looks posted in your account but never appears in search results, usually because a filter caught it (duplicate text, too many links, a reposting pattern). A flagged ad was reported by users as spam, miscategorized or prohibited, and enough flags remove it. Neither is fixed by changing the IP; fix the ad and follow the posting rules.

For ordinary posting you may not need a proxy at all; if you use one, make it sticky, one session per account and city, and never rotate between cities for one account. Rotating IPs are for logged-out checks only. ProxyField sticky sessions hold one IP from 30 seconds to 36 hours (ttl 30 to 129,600 s, 20 minutes if you set none), and a dedicated ISP IP keeps the same address for 30 days (from $2.29 per IP). An account should keep one IP for the whole session and come back from the same city. A sticky IP does not make duplicate posting acceptable: Craigslist asks you to post to the single area closest to you and to post each item no more than once every 48 hours.

What keeps a sticky IP, and what changes it:

A small business in a few cities: one session id per account and per city, never one IP hopping between cities.

ttl-3600 holds the IP for 1 hour of posting; raise it to ttl-129600 for 36 hours. Each location posts its own local ads to its own Craigslist site once per 48 hours at most (Craigslist's posting rules); one ad copied across several city sites is non-local posting, with or without a proxy. To fix or refresh an ad, edit or renew it instead of reposting it from a new IP.

A new IP on every request suits only logged-out checks of public listing pages. Re-using the same IP after 36 h: not possible, since after its ttl ends the same session ID does not bring back the same IP. See Sticky sessions up to 36 hours.