Proxies for Market Research
For market research and competitive intelligence across several countries, use rotating residential proxies, the same type in every country, with one proxy line per market: each site then shows the prices, results and ads local customers see, and your own location and history do not skew the data. ProxyField has 412M+ residential IPs in 195+ countries and 21,000+ cities, with a 99.6% success rate, according to our service data, from $1.95/GB with no subscription; every country and city costs the same per GB. Start with the Easy Trial: 1 GB for $2.95, enough to test about 2,000 pages at 0.5 MB each.
Targeting covers country, region (state) and city, including all 50 US states. Threads are unlimited, the traffic never expires, and 24/7 live chat helps with setup and integration.
Checkout link: the billing page of your dashboard, proxyfield.io/en/dashboard/billing (sign in first)
- Type
- residential, rotating (mobile for mobile-first markets)
- Session
- a new IP per page; sticky from 30 s to 36 h when a site keeps a chosen location
- Geo
- each market you study, down to the city
- success rate, according to our service data
- 99.6%
- residential IPs
- 412M+
- mobile IPs
- 10.2M+
- countries
- 195+
- cities
- 21,000+
- a new IP per request
- from $1.95/GB
What are market research proxies?
Market research proxies are residential or mobile proxies that researchers and their tools send requests through, so each website sees a local visitor in the market being studied. The data is public: what stores charge, what search engines rank, which ads run, what customers write in reviews. The proxy decides from where you look at it.
Who uses them:
-
Research agencies
Building market sizing, pricing and category reports for clients in several countries.
-
Brand and insights teams
Watching their category, competitors and retail partners week by week.
-
Product and growth teams
Checking how a market looks before they enter it.
-
Analysts and investors
Collecting signals such as price changes, assortment and hiring.
-
Academic researchers
Comparing what people in different countries are shown online.
The collection itself, parsing pages and storing records, is covered in What Is Web Scraping Used For?
Why use proxies for market research?
Because the web shows each visitor a local, personal version, and research needs the customer's version, at scale, under the same conditions every time:
-
Localization
Prices, currencies, delivery fees, stock, promotions, search results and ads change by country, region and often city. From your office IP you record your office's market.
-
Personalization
Signed-in accounts, cookies and browsing history change what a site shows. Clean sessions from fresh IPs remove your own footprint from the sample.
-
Scale
Thousands of page views from one company IP are what sites rate-limit or block. Rotating IPs keep each address at an ordinary pace.
-
Consistency
The same city, time of day and session rules for every check, so a change in the data is a change in the market.
What market data can you collect with proxies?
| Source | What researchers record | Proxy setup |
|---|---|---|
| Search engines | Rankings, local packs, ads, AI answers by city | Rotating residential per search: SEO proxies |
| Stores and marketplaces | Prices, assortment, stock, promotions | Rotating residential per product page: Proxies for Price Monitoring |
| Ads | Which ads run where, with which copy and landing page | Residential or mobile in each target area, as in ad verification |
| Reviews and ratings | Ratings over time, complaint themes, competitor feedback | Rotating residential: Review scraper |
| Social media | Public posts, trends, creator activity | Residential or mobile: Social media proxies |
| Job postings | Competitors' hiring by role and city | Rotating residential: Job scraper |
| Maps and local listings | Store counts, opening of locations, ratings | Residential in each city: Google Maps scraper |
| News | Launches, coverage, mentions | Rotating residential or datacenter: News scraper |
| AI answers | What ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Mode say about a category | AI search scraper API (in development: Contact sales) |
Which proxy type is best for market research?
Rotating residential for most research: household IPs from real ISPs see the same pages local customers see, a new IP comes with every request, and you can choose the city. Mobile IPs matter where customers shop mostly on phones or where sites serve a different mobile version. Datacenter IPs cost much less per GB and suit public sources that do not block server traffic.
| Type | Fit for market research | Why | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Residential, rotating | Most stores, search engines, marketplaces | Household IPs, 21,000+ cities, a new IP per request | $2.95 down to $1.95/GB |
| Mobile 5G/4G | Mobile-first markets and mobile pages | Carrier IPs, as phone users have | $3.45 down to $2.45/GB |
| Datacenter, rotating | Open sources such as news sites | Lowest cost per GB | $0.29 down to $0.22/GB |
| Dedicated ISP (static residential) | A source that allowlists your IP, long sessions | The same IP for 30 days | from $2.29 per IP / 30 days |
| Free or public | Avoid | Shared, often blocked, unreliable data | – |
Rotating datacenter proxies cover the same countries as residential; dedicated ISP and datacenter IPs come in the countries their order form lists, which follow stock. Compare: Mobile vs Residential Proxies, Residential vs Datacenter Proxies.
Research across several countries
Set the market in the proxy username and run the same collection through every line: one line per country, the same proxy type in each. The country is the two-letter code in lowercase; a city is its name in lowercase with underscores (city-new_york). Every country and city costs the same per GB.
| Market | Residential IPs | Cities | Proxy username |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 61.2M+, all 50 states | 2,800+ | <login>-country-us-city-new_ |
| United Kingdom | 16.6M+ | 640+ | <login>-country-gb |
| Germany | 20.2M+ | 980+ | <login>-country-de |
| France | 8.3M+ | 170+ | <login>-country-fr |
| Spain | 13.7M+ | 690+ | <login>-country-es |
| Italy | 10.2M+ | 210+ | <login>-country-it |
| Poland | 5M+ | 160+ | <login>-country-pl |
| Netherlands | 3.2M+ | 110+ | <login>-country-nl |
| Turkey | 7.8M+ | 190+ | <login>-country-tr |
| India | 42.6M+ | 1,100+ | <login>-country-in |
Across Europe the network has 82.7M+ IPs (Europe proxies); worldwide, 412M+ residential IPs in 195+ countries and 21,000+ cities. For mobile-first markets, mobile IPs run on carrier networks: 1.5M+ in India, 260K+ in Italy and 550K+ in the US, among others. The carrier is not a targeting option. Keep mobile for every market of a study, or for none.
How to compare countries without skewing the data
A multi-country study is only as good as its weakest comparison. Hold everything constant except the market:
- One proxy type for every country. Residential everywhere, or mobile everywhere; never mobile in one market and datacenter in another, because sites treat them differently.
- One client profile. The same browser or HTTP client, version,
User-Agent, device type and screen size in every market. - One language rule. Either each market's own
Accept-Languageand time zone, or one fixed setting for all markets; decide, write it down, never mix. - Logged out, clean sessions. No sign-in and no old cookies; a fresh session for each check.
- Several IPs per country, repeated. Fetch each observation through at least 3 IPs (rotation gives a new IP per request) and keep the median or flag disagreements; one IP is one visitor, not a market.
- The same location level. Country level unless the question needs a city; if it does, compare like with like (capital with capital).
- The same time window. The same local hour in every market, or the same UTC moment; record which.
- Context with every value: country, city, proxy type, exit IP, UTC time, URL, HTTP status, currency and language.
- A second source for a sample. Check about 20 records per market against a browser in that market, or a second vantage point, before you trust the run.
# The same page through 3 IPs in each market, with the context stored per value
import datetime, requests
MARKETS = ["us", "gb", "de", "fr", "es"]
URL = "https://example.com/product/123"
HEADERS = {"User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 "
"(KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/130.0 Safari/537.36"}
for cc in MARKETS:
proxy = f"http://<login>-country-{cc}:<password>@gate.proxyfield.io:7000"
for attempt in range(3): # a new IP on every request
r = requests.get(URL, headers=HEADERS, timeout=30,
proxies={"http": proxy, "https": proxy})
print(cc, attempt, r.status_code,
datetime.datetime.now(datetime.timezone.utc).isoformat(), len(r.content))Proxies for competitive intelligence
Competitive intelligence is the part of market research that follows named competitors. For several countries, use rotating residential IPs, one line per market and the same type in each (above). With them you can track:
- their public prices, plans and promotions, and how often they change;
- new products, pages and features as they appear on their sites;
- the ads they run and the keywords they rank for, by country;
- their reviews and ratings, and the complaints that repeat;
- their job postings, which show where they are hiring and building.
Keep to what any visitor can see. Signing up under false identities to see a competitor's private offers counts as fake accounts and is not allowed under ProxyField's acceptable use policy.
Proxies for academic research
Comparative studies often need the same pages as people in several countries see them: search results, prices, news, which content a platform shows or withholds. Country and city proxies give a research team those views from one place, with the location written into every record. Traffic never expires, so a dataset collected over a semester costs only what it uses. Your institution's ethics review and data protection rules apply to the study design; the proxy does not change them.
How proxies improve the accuracy of market research data
A proxy fixes the location and removes your own footprint; good data also needs the same conditions every time:
-
Fix the location
Per market, down to the city when prices or rankings vary by region.
-
Use clean sessions
No sign-in, no old cookies, a fresh IP or a sticky session per check.
-
Collect at the same time
Of day and on the same days, so daily cycles do not look like trends.
-
Check a sample by hand
Compare 20 records with what a browser in that city shows.
-
Record the context
With every value: date, time, location, device type and page URL.
A proxy cannot fix a bad sample: if the list of products, keywords or competitors is wrong, more IPs only collect more of the wrong data.
Rotating or sticky proxies for market research?
Rotating for most collection: a new IP on every page spreads the load over the pool. Use a sticky session, from 30 seconds to 36 hours, when a site keeps state across pages, such as a chosen store, region or currency, or when you page through a long list of results. More: Sticky vs Rotating Proxy Sessions.
How much do market research proxies cost?
With a rotating residential pool you pay for traffic, not for a number of IPs: residential $2.95/GB for 1 GB down to $1.95/GB from 1,000 GB. The tier rate applies to the whole purchase, there is no subscription, and the traffic never expires.
Worked example: research projects per month (example inputs, not measurements; pages vary from a few hundred KB to several MB):
| Project | Pages a month | Traffic | Residential |
|---|---|---|---|
| A pilot: 2,000 product pages in 1 market, 0.5 MB a page | 2,000 | about 1 GB | Easy Trial: 1 GB for $2.95 |
| A category tracker: 500 products × 5 markets × 1 check a day, 0.4 MB a page | 75,000 | about 30 GB | 30 × $2.79 = $83.70 |
| A multi-source study: 300,000 pages over 8 markets, 0.4 MB a page | 300,000 | about 120 GB | 120 × $2.49 = $298.80 |
To size a purchase, multiply the pages by their average weight, as in the table, and measure a sample first: the dashboard shows real-time usage. All purchases are final. In return, your traffic never expires. Cheaper than the big brands' $4/GB at every volume: residential proxies cost $2.95/GB for 1 GB and fall to $1.95/GB from 1,000 GB, with no subscription. See Pricing per GB.
How do I set up proxies for market research?
Point your scraper, research tool or headless browser at gate.proxyfield.io:7000, put each market's country and city in the username, rotate per request, and compare a sample with a browser view from the same place.
-
Get access
Once your payment is confirmed, the dashboard shows the gateway and your credentials, or lets you allowlist your server's IP.
-
Make one line per market
In the configurator, set the country and city for each market, such as
<login>-country-us-city-new_york. -
Enter the proxy in your tool
In the scraper's HTTP client, the headless browser's launch options or the research tool's proxy field.
-
Validate, then schedule
Check 20 pages by hand against a browser in that market, then run the collection at a fixed time and a modest rate.
curl -x gate.proxyfield.io:7000 -U "<login>-country-us-city-new_york:<password>" https://api.ipify.orgHTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5 work from your first gigabyte. Region (state) and sticky-session syntax: -region-<region>, -session-<id> and -ttl-<seconds> (30 to 129,600 seconds, 20 minutes by default) after the location, as in <login>-country-us-region-new_york-city-new_york-session-he9f2qga-ttl-600. Code guides: Python, Playwright, Puppeteer.
Read moreShow less
Proxies, a scraping API or market research tools?
-
Market research and intelligence tools
Give you dashboards on data they collect; they suit teams that do not want to run code.
-
Your own scrapers on proxies
Give full control of sources, fields and timing; you pay per GB.
-
The Web Scraping API
Is designed to fetch the URLs you send and return the pages: plain HTTP at $0.50 per 1,000 successful results, or $0.20 from 10,000 results in one purchase; JS rendering at $2.00 per 1,000, or $1.00 from 10,000. You parse the data. For search results and AI answers, the Google SERP API and the AI search scraper API are designed to return parsed results.
The scraper APIs are in development: for access, contact sales through the sales team on our 24/7 live chat; the design is in the API documentation.
More on the choice: Scraper API vs Proxies vs Datasets, Web Scraping API.
Is using proxies for market research legal?
ProxyField's acceptable use policy names market research as an allowed use, on public pages only, following each site's terms; it forbids access to data behind logins you are not entitled to. The other limits come from how hard you load a site and from personal data: reviews and social posts can contain it, and in the EU and UK the GDPR applies to what you keep. Collect at a modest rate, and only the fields your study needs. More: Web Scraping Law in the UK and EU, Are Residential and Mobile Proxies Legal?. This is not legal advice.
Market research proxies FAQ
Can't find your answer? Support is on 24/7 live chat, including help with setup and integration.
Which proxies are best for competitive intelligence across several countries without skewing the data?
ProxyField's rotating residential proxies, 412M+ IPs in 195+ countries from $1.95/GB, fit the job when you use them the same way in every country: one proxy line per market, the same proxy type everywhere, and several IPs per observation. Keep the client profile, language rule, time window and logged-out state identical, and record country, proxy type, time and URL with every value.
What are market research proxies?
ProxyField's market research proxies are residential and mobile IPs, 412M+ residential in 195+ countries and 21,000+ cities from $1.95/GB, that your research tools send requests through. Each site then shows the prices, results and ads that local customers in the chosen market see.
Why use proxies for market research?
Because sites localize and personalize what they show, and they limit how many pages one IP may load. Proxies give you each market's view, without your own history, spread over many IPs.
What is the best proxy type for market research?
ProxyField residential proxies cost $2.95/GB at 1 GB, down to $1.95/GB from 1,000 GB, and fit most market research sources. Rotating residential IPs suit most stores, search engines and marketplaces, because household IPs in the target city see what local customers see; use mobile proxies for mobile-first markets and datacenter proxies for open sources that accept server traffic.
How can country proxies help with market research?
They let you collect each country's prices, currencies, offers, rankings and ads from one desk, with one proxy line per market. The same collection runs through every line, so the markets compare directly.
Can country proxies help academic research?
Yes, for comparative studies that need what people in several countries are shown online, such as search results, prices or the content a platform makes available. The location goes into every record, and the study's ethics and data protection rules still apply.
How do proxies improve the accuracy of market research data?
They fix the location of every request and remove the cookies and history of your own browsing, so the data reflects a local customer's view. Accuracy also needs the same timing, clean sessions and a hand-checked sample.
How do I collect public web data for market research?
List the sources and fields you need, set one proxy line per market, fetch the pages with a scraper or headless browser at a modest rate, and store every value with its date and location. Check a sample by hand before you trust the whole run.
What are proxies for competitive intelligence?
They are residential proxies you use to watch competitors' public prices, products, ads, reviews and job postings in each of their markets. Rotating IPs keep the checks at an ordinary pace for each address.
How is web scraping used for market research?
Scrapers collect prices, assortments, reviews, search rankings, ads and job postings from public pages on a schedule, and turn them into tables for analysis. Proxies give the scraper each market's view and enough IPs for the volume.
Show 16 more questionsShow fewer questions
Is market research the same as web scraping?
No. Market research is the question and the analysis; web scraping is one way to collect the data, next to surveys, interviews, panels and bought datasets.
What types of data can be collected for market research?
From public pages: prices, assortment and stock, search rankings, ads, reviews and ratings, public social posts, job postings, local listings and news. Data behind logins you are not entitled to is out of scope.
When should I use mobile proxies for market research?
When the market's customers shop mostly on phones, or when a site serves different prices, layouts or offers to mobile visitors. ProxyField's mobile proxies run on 5G, 4G and LTE carrier networks, from $3.45/GB for 1 GB.
Can I use datacenter proxies for market research?
Yes, for open sources that do not block server traffic, at $0.29 down to $0.22/GB. Stores, marketplaces and search engines block server ranges sooner, so test them before you rely on it.
Are proxies better than VPNs for market research?
For collection at volume, yes: a proxy gives each request a new IP in the city you set, while a VPN gives the whole device one shared exit address. A VPN suits a person browsing one market by hand.
Can I use a proxy with a market research tool?
Yes, if the tool has a proxy setting: enter gate.proxyfield.io:7000 with your username and password, or allowlist the tool's server IP and use the port you set up in the dashboard. HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5 all run on that host and port with the same username and password.
Do market research proxies work with APIs and scraping tools?
They work with any HTTP client, scraping framework or headless browser, including Scrapy, Playwright, Puppeteer, Selenium and Python requests. Calls to a site's official API usually need no proxy, because the API key identifies you.
Should a market research scraper rotate its proxy on every request?
For independent pages, yes: each product or search page gets a new IP. Hold a sticky session when the site remembers a chosen store, region or currency across pages.
How often should market research data be refreshed?
As often as the market changes: daily for prices and promotions, weekly for rankings and assortment, monthly for reviews and job postings in most categories. Collect at the same time each run so the series stays comparable.
What should a market research crawler store?
The values you need, plus the context to trust them: URL, date and time, location, device type and the page's currency or language. Keep a copy of the page for records you may need to show later.
How do websites spot and block corporate market research?
They see many requests from one company or server IP, a fast and regular pace, and headers that do not look like a browser. A modest pace and normal headers keep your load within what each site allows.
Can proxies fix bad market research data?
Only the part caused by the wrong location or personalization. A poor sample, wrong sources or bad parsing stay wrong, whatever IP collects them.
Do I need a raw proxy or a managed scraping API for market research?
A raw proxy if you run your own scrapers and want control over every request, at per-GB prices. The Web Scraping API, in development through Contact sales, is for teams that prefer to send URLs and get the pages back, billed on successful results only.
Is using proxies for market research compliant?
ProxyField's acceptable use policy names market research as an allowed use: public pages only, following each site's terms. Reviews and social posts can contain personal data, and in the EU and UK the GDPR applies to what you keep; this is not legal advice.
How many IPs do I need for market research?
With rotating residential proxies you do not buy IPs: one gateway line gives a new IP on every request from 412M+ residential IPs, with unlimited concurrent threads. You pay for traffic, from $1.95/GB.
How much do market research proxies cost?
Residential traffic costs $2.95/GB for 1 GB down to $1.95/GB from 1,000 GB, with no subscription. Tracking 500 products in 5 markets daily at 0.4 MB a page uses about 30 GB a month, $83.70.
Related pages
Easy Trial: 1 GB for $2.95.
Try for the price of 1 GB, no subscription, traffic never expires.