How to Use Proxies with Playwright

Which proxy to use

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.

What to enter

A PiratProxies 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.

Host	`resi.piratproxies.com`
HTTP port	`8080`
SOCKS5 port	`1080`
Username	`USERNAME`
Password	from your plan page

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.

Steps

Give server, username and password as separate values when launching the browser.
For several IP addresses in one browser, set a different proxy on each browser context.

Example

Python

from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright

with sync_playwright() as p:
    browser = p.chromium.launch(proxy={"server": "http://resi.piratproxies.com:8080", "username": "USERNAME", "password": "PASSWORD"})
    page = browser.new_page()
    page.goto("https://api.ipify.org")
    print(page.inner_text("body"))
    browser.close()

Node.js

const { chromium } = require('playwright');

(async () => {
  const browser = await chromium.launch({ proxy: { server: 'http://resi.piratproxies.com:8080', username: 'USERNAME', password: 'PASSWORD' } });
  const page = await browser.newPage();
  await page.goto('https://api.ipify.org');
  console.log(await page.innerText('body'));
  await browser.close();
})();

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

For crawling many pages with Playwright, 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

If it does not work

A login written inside the server address is ignored. Use the separate username and password keys.
Each context with its own session ID in the username gets its own IP address, which is the cheap way to run many identities in one browser.
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

Does Playwright work with SOCKS5 proxies?

Not with a username and password: Playwright can use SOCKS5 only without a login. Use the HTTP port, 8080, which works for both http and https sites.

Which PiratProxies proxy should I use with Playwright?

Playwright is a product of its own makers. PiratProxies 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.