Top 10 Proxy Services for Craigslist Scraping (2023 Edition)

Justin Shin
Are you looking forward to scraping data from Craigslist? Then you need good proxies to scale through as the system has an anti-proxy system in place. Below is an article that discusses some of the best proxies for Craigslist scraping.

Table Of Contents

The Best Proxies for Craigslist Scraping

Here is a comparison table of the top 10 proxy providers for Craigslist Scraping,

Proxy Providers IP Pool Size Locations Covered Concurrency Bandwidth Cost Unique Features
Bright Data 72 million Global coverage Unlimited Starts from 1GB $15/month Best overall proxies, best geo-targeting support, speed
IPRoyal 2 million 180 countries Unlimited Starts from 1GB $7/month Affordable, city-level targeting, bandwidth never expires
Soax 5 million 100 countries Unlimited Starts from 8GB $99/month Clean proxy pool, granular geo-targeting
Geosurf 3 million 100 countries Unlimited Starts from 20GB $300/month Supports a good number of cities
Smartproxy 40 million 195 countries Unlimited Starts from 1GB $12.5/month Fast proxies, supports state-level targeting for the US
IPBurger 75 million 195 countries Unlimited Starts from 5GB $69/month Premium proxies, supports over 2100 cities globally
Shifter 31 million Global coverage Unlimited Unlimited $199/month Unlimited bandwidth, high rotating proxies
Oxylabs 102 million Global coverage Unlimited Starts from 1GB $15/month Great Bright Data alternative, huge IP pool
Hydraproxy 5 million 100 countries Unlimited Starts from 1GB $5/month Best mobile US rotating proxies
NetNut 52+ million Global coverage Unlimited Starts from 20GB $350/month Most Reliable proxies, Excellent geo-targeting support, speed
Nimbleway Undisclosed 100 countries Unlimited Starts from 21GB $300/month Reliable next-gen proxies for enterprises

There are over 80 million listings on Craigslist across all of the Craigslist sections and cities. In terms of city support, there are over 570 cities across 70 countries on the platform.

This location coverage and the high number of active users are what responsible for the number of listings available on the platform. If you are interested in scraping these listings, then you need to know Craigslist does have systems in place to detect and block bot access. Among other things, you need to make use of high-quality proxies to avoid detection.

Undetectable proxies are not the only requirement for scraping Craigslist. Since it makes use of geo-targeting and geo-restrictions to enforce its access only to local communities, you also need proxies that provide you IPs with the geo-location you are interested in.

Looking at all of these requirements, you can tell you need to be picky when deciding on the proxies to use. It is, for this reason, this article has been written — to provide you with recommendations on the best proxies for Craigslist scraping. Below are the providers I trust will work for scraping Craigslist.

1. Bright Data — Overall Best Proxies for Craigslist Scraping

First on my list is the Bright Data service and this is not without reasons. First, it offers the most reliable residential proxy network with proxies that are quite undetectable to the Craigslist anti-spam system or that of any website. It also offers the best location coverage and geo-targeting support which you can use to choose the specific city and region to scrape Craigslist data for. Aside from these two reasons, there are other broader reasons you will want to use this provider for scraping Craigslist.

In most of my performance tests carried out periodically, Bright Data has proven to be one of the fastest residential proxy services out there. It does have a proxy pool with over 72 million IP addresses, making it one of the largest in the market. This large proxy pool makes its proxy rotation system efficient as I normally get over 80 percent unique IPs for my scraping tasks. This is about the highest you can get from any provider. The only major problem you will face with this provider is that it insists you must go through its KYC process.

2. IPRoyal — Affordable Provider with City-Level Targeting Support

The IPRoyal service is another provider I will recommend. But based on its offering, I am recommending it for small to mid-scale projects with a low budget. The feature you will come to like here for scraping Craigslist is its granular geo-targeting which supports down to city-level targeting. With this, you cannot only scrape listings from specific cities, but you can also post classified ads in cities you are not. Its proxy pool size is 2 million IPs and the number of supported countries is 175.

These 2 million IPs will work for your small to mid-scale scraping projects. If you began requesting close to a million unique IPs, the IP rotation system will begin to fail. This provider offers rotating proxies but does have support for session management. Aside from the affordable pricing of this service, it might also interest you to know that bandwidth never expires for this service unless exhausted.

3. Soax — Cleanest Proxy Pool on the List

Soax is a residential proxy network with over 5 million residential IP addresses and 3.5 million mobile IPs. This provider is one of the best you can use for scraping Craigslist. I have used it for a recent scraping task and the result was perfect. It does have support for a granular geo-targeting option which allows me to choose the specific city I needed to scrape listings from. It is important you know that not all cities are supported here for scraping as some cities have fewer IPs from them making such cities not perfect for scraping at any reasonable scale.

One thing you will come to like about the Soax proxy network is how it has been able to maintain a clean proxy pool. It regularly checks its proxy pool to remove bad and inactive IPs. This ensures you will mostly get assigned an IP that works which reduces the number of retries and timeouts. In terms of pricing, you will need a minimum of $99 to get started with this service.

4. Geosurf — Supports A Good Number of Cities

Geosurf does not get a lot of mention on this blog but when it comes to scraping Craigslist, we can’t help but recommend it. This is because it is one of the best for this because of its multiple city's support. As of the time of writing this article, there are over 1700 cities supported by Geosurf that you can get IP addresses from. This city-level targeting option makes it one of the best for scraping Craigslist. I have used it and can tell you its residential IPs are not detected as proxies by Craigslist. If you do not send too many concurrent requests then performance is decent for this service.

In terms of the number of IPs it had, there are currently 3.7 million IPs gotten from all of the regions supported by Geosurf. This service has a perfect uptime and the reliability of the network is one I can vouch for. The only problem I actually have with it at the time is its small proxy pool but things seem to be improving — but at a slow pace. For now, when it comes to scraping Craigslist, it is one of the best providers I recommend.

5. Smartproxy — Fastest Proxies for Scraping Craigslist

If speed is important to you, then you might want to take a look at the Smartproxy service. In my routine performance test carried out on proxy providers I watch, Smartproxy has the fastest residential proxy network in terms of response rate. When it comes to scraping Craigslist, you can use the Smartproxy service especially if you have the US as your target. For the US, this service does have geo-targeting support at the state level. You can’t go beyond state-level targeting as there is no city-level targeting. But this isn’t a problem for scraping Craigslist.

This provider is also one of the largest in terms of proxy pool as it does have 40 million IP addresses in it. One thing you will come to like about this service is that you can maintain a session for up to 30 minutes. It also does offer high-rotating proxies that change IPs after every request which is perfect for scraping Craigslist. The pricing of this service is also affordable as it offers the best quality-price ratio.

6. IPBurger — Premium Residential Proxies for Craigslist

The IPBurger service is one of the premium proxy providers out there. It does have one of the largest proxy pools with over 75 million IPs in it. One of the features that make it perfect for scraping Craigslist is its location coverage. IPBurger does support over 2100 cities from across the globe. This then means that you can choose the specific city you need IPs from which should correspond with the Craigslist city of interest.

The proxies offered by IPBurger are undetectable to the Craigslist anti-spam system. The proxies offered are high-rotating proxies that change IPs after every request. It also does support session proxies too. One thing you need to know about IPBurger is that the number of IPs you have access to is determined by the plan you subscribe to. The smallest plan ($69) comes with 5GB and allows you access to a pool of 6 million IPs.

7. Shifter — Best Unlimited Bandwidth Proxies for Craigslist

The Shifter service is another one to look at when you need proxies for scraping Craigslist. For scraping Craigslist, I will recommend you make use of their back-connect special proxies. For this, you get residential IPs rotated for you randomly or at a specific period of time depending on your settings. One of the perks of using their rotating proxies is that it is only the one on this list that allows you to use unlimited bandwidth.

However, pricing is based on the number of ports and the minimum you will pay to use their proxies is $200. On a general note, you need to know that only mid to big businesses are able to use this service for scraping Craigslist. But it does have the advantage of allowing you to enjoy unlimited bandwidth. The service has over 31 million IP addresses in it pool and has got over 190 countries in the list of supported countries.

8. Oxylabs — Best Alternative to Bright Data for Scraping Craigslist

Oxylabs has proven to be the most resilient competitor to the Bright Data service. And when it comes to scraping Craigslist, it has all it takes to be a Craigslist scraping proxy. Starting from the speed, Oxylabs has performed well in my speed test. The proxies it offers are undetectable because they are residential proxies routing requests via devices of real Internet users. The proxies are rotating residential proxies. And Oxylabs is one of the few providers that support high-rotating proxies that changes IP after every request.

This is possible because of its large proxy pool of over 100 million residential IPs. This enables it to efficiently manage IP rotation without repeating too many already-used IPs. In terms of location coverage, you can get IPs from all of the Craigslist-supported regions. It only major problem is the fact that you must do a KYC as in the case of Bright Data before you make use of it.

9. Hydraproxy — Best Mobile US Rotating Proxies for Craigslist

All of the providers mentioned in the article are residential proxy providers. This is because of their undetectable nature. For this provider, I recommend their mobile proxies. This is because of how effective they are at scraping data from Craigslist. For their rotating mobile proxy network, the only supported region is the United States and the service has IPs from all of the states in the US. If you are looking for a proxy that does more than scraping Craigslist then this provider is a good candidate.

I was able to use it to manage multiple Craigslist accounts for a long period of time without my account getting detected and banned. This is because of the extended IP rotation period of 30 minutes and even more. One thing you will come to like about this service is its flexible pricing, allowing you to purchase as small as one proxy for a short period of even one day.

10. NetNut – Reliable Static Residential Proxies for Scraping Craigslist

Craigslist is one of the most popular platforms for web scrapers and data miners because of its data-rich environment. To elevate your data extraction efficiency on Craigslist, one of the best proxy networks to use is the NetNut, with over 1 million undetectable static IPs distributed globally.

NetNut's static residential proxies offer anonymous, speedy, and unrestricted access to a worldwide proxy network for a variety of online activities on Craigslist. It helps you with things like SEO and SERPs, market research, social media management, brand protection, web data extraction, and so much more on Craigslist's job markets. Also, with a network pool of over 52 million residential IPs, you can carry out precision geo-targeting so that your messages get to the right location and audience.

Of course, there are also sticky IPs that offer the option to keep the same residential IP for as long as you need, helping you evade suspicion and bans when working Craigslist’s data. Switching to another IP address is also possible. NetNut handles such operations for you when you opt for their rotating residential proxy option.

The ease of integrating NetNut into your existing data miner tools and platforms is also a highlight of the service. NetNut's API and dashboard access on Craigslist do provide valuable insights to help you evaluate your activities on the platform.

You can begin right away with the 7-day free trial options now on Craigslist and experience the power of NetNut's static ISP. Paid plans begin at $350 for 20GB of bandwidth, which is a relatively cheaper option compared to other top-of-the-line premium options.

11. Nimbleway — Reliable Next-Gen Proxies for Craigslist

Nimbleway is a data collection infrastructure that provides a web scraping API, an automation browser, and a proxy network. The proxy network is known as Nimble IP and from the test that was carried out a while ago, it is one of the best proxy networks for scraping Craigslist. Unlike the other providers above, this provider is quite new and I have only used it for a few scraping tasks. It is a proxy network for enterprise and from the speed I recorded, you can be sure of a fast provider that works.

One thing you need to know is that Nimbleway pricing shows its target customers are companies and mid to big businesses. This is because you need $300 to get started with the service. It is one of the few services that does not provide details of the actual number of IPs in its pool. But I can assure it the numbers are in the millions with a good location coverage.

FAQs

What are Craigslist Proxies?

Craigslist proxies or proxies for Craigslist are the same. These are the proxies that you can use to access the Craigslist website without getting detected and banned. It is important you know that there are no proxies labeled Craigslist proxies out there — except for marketing reasons. All you need are undetectable proxies. The specific task you need the proxies for will determine the proxies you purchase. While static residential proxies are good for managing multiple accounts on the platform, they are not the best for scraping data from the platform since their IPs don’t change.

How is IP Geolocation Important for Craigslist Scraping?

Craigslist is one of the services that geo-restrict users and geo-target content of its websites to users in specific locations. If you visit it with your real IP address, then it shows you content for users in your location. To scrape Craigslist data, you will need to access it with IPs from the location you need data for. This is why you need to be mindful of the location you get IPs from. However, this geolocation restriction is on a country level as it does not enforce this on a city level since in this case, resolving to a specific city is kinda difficult and it wouldn’t want to lock legitimate users out.

What to consider for a Craigslist scraping proxy service?

Here are some additional factors to consider when choosing a proxy service for Craigslist scraping:

Where to Buy Craigslist Proxies?

While there are some private proxies you can use for accessing Craigslist, I will advise you to ditch the idea except you know what you are doing. Residential proxies are the best providers you can use for Craigslist. You can use their rotating proxies for scraping Craigslist while their static proxies are best used for managing your Craigslist account and posting. Bright Data, Smartproxy, IPRoyal, and Soax are some of the best proxy providers out there you can purchase proxies for your Craigslist operations and they are quite affordable.

Conclusion

As a way of concluding this article, you need to know that getting the right proxies is only a piece of the puzzle. To scrape Craigslist, you need to understand on it website is structured and how it detects and blocks bots. Unless you try to understand all it takes and master them all, you are better off getting someone else to scrape for you as the service will still detect you. The good news is, learning how to best scrape Craigslist is not difficult and there are credible guides out there that show you the best ways to get it done.

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