How to use proxies with curl

Which proxy works best with curl?

For most scraping, Residential Lite is the cheapest way to get home IP addresses in the right country. Use Residential when you need a particular state or city, and Unlimited Datacenter for targets in the United States that do not block data centre addresses.

• Residentialfrom $3.52 per GB
• Residential Litefrom $0.96 per GB
• Unlimited Datacenterfrom $0.56 per hour

Proxy settings for curl: host, port and login

A BooProxies plan gives you four things: a host, a port, a username and a password. These are the values for Residential; the username and password are on your plan page.

As one address:

http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@resi.proxies.boo:8080

The country and the session are chosen in the username, not in a separate setting. The generator on your plan page writes the username for you, and Targeting and sessions explains each part.

curl proxy setup, step by step

1. Put the proxy address after -x.
2. Ask an IP-check address. The answer is the IP your request left from.
3. Add -v to see the conversation with the proxy when something fails.

curl proxy example

HTTP

curl -x http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@resi.proxies.boo:8080 https://api.ipify.org

SOCKS5

curl -x socks5h://USERNAME:PASSWORD@resi.proxies.boo:1080 https://api.ipify.org

Replace USERNAME and PASSWORD with the login from your plan page. The example asks an IP-check address, so the output is the address your request left from.

Rotating or sticky sessions for curl?

For crawling many pages with curl, leave the username without a session so every request leaves from a new IP address. For anything with steps that belong together, such as a login, a cart or a paginated search that sets cookies, add a session to the username so those requests share one address.

A sticky username looks like this:

USERNAME-country-us-time-600-session-a1b2c3d4

curl proxy not working?

• On Windows, use curl.exe in PowerShell. Plain curl there is an alias for a different command.
• With socks5h the proxy looks up the site's name; with socks5 your own computer does. Use socks5h.
• If the password has characters such as @ or :, put the login in -U username:password instead of in the address.
• A 407 error means the username or password was not accepted. Copy both again from your plan page, and check that nothing added a space or cut the username short.
• If the IP address is in the wrong country, look at the username: the country code is part of it. More fixes.

Questions about curl and proxies

Terms explained: web scraping, rotating proxy, sticky session, rate limiting, headless browser.

curl is a product of its own makers. BooProxies is not affiliated with it; the name is used here only to say what this guide is about. Use it within the rules of the sites you work with and our acceptable use policy.