How to use proxies with Screaming Frog

Why Screaming Frog needs a proxy

A proxy lets you crawl a site as a visitor from another country would see it, or keep a large audit from being rate-limited on your office IP address.

Which proxy to use

Residential proxies in the country you want to audit from. Add a sticky session to the username, so the whole crawl comes from one visitor.

• Residentialfrom $2.64 per GB
• Residential Litefrom $0.69 per GB

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.

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

1. Open File > Settings > Proxy on Windows or Linux. On a Mac it is under the Screaming Frog SEO Spider menu, in Settings.
2. Tick Use Proxy Server and enter the host resi.piratproxies.com and the port 8080.
3. Tick Use Proxy Credentials and enter your username and password.
4. Click OK and restart the program. The proxy is only used after a restart.

Menu names can differ a little between versions of Screaming Frog. The four values to enter are always the same.

Rotating or sticky

For crawling many pages with Screaming Frog, 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

• The program takes one proxy at a time. For a new IP address on each request, use a rotating username; the rotation then happens on our side.
• A full crawl of a large site downloads every page and resource. Estimate the size before you start on a gigabyte plan.
• 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

Screaming Frog 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.