Are you interested in building a price aggregation application to help people get the best deal when making a purchase online? Then come in now and discover the best proxies to use to get this done without being detected.
If you have tried checking out the price of a particular product on e-commerce platforms, you will discover that the price varies across platforms. And one interesting thing about this is that this difference in the prices of products is more common than you think.
As more and more online shoppers discover this, they get to develop the habit and checking the price of an item across multiple stores before making a final decision on which of the e-commerce store to buy from. However, the whole process can get tiring and repetitive at some point. Price aggregation systems have come to make the whole process easy.
- Read more, What is Data Aggregation?
Price aggregation systems extract and display the price of a specific product as sold on the e-commerce stores they support. They do so by scraping the publicly available price data. Take, for instance, Amazon and eBay sell the same model of a mobile phone. Amazon sells at $600, while eBay sells at $570.
A price aggregation application scrapes the price data for this website and displays them on the same page for an easy buying decision. You’ll agree with me that price aggregation systems are quite helpful to online shoppers. However, the same can’t be said about the websites they pull data from as they do that through web scraping, and website administrators frown at it.
What are Proxies for Price Aggregation?
Proxies for price aggregation are not different from regular proxies. They act as intermediaries between clients’ computers and websites on the Internet. When a computer or application is using a proxy server, web requests it sends goes through the proxy, and its IP address is substituted with that of the proxy server before getting to the intended website. With this, the IP address of the computer that initiated the request is kept hidden.
Unlike some website-specific proxies, price aggregation proxies have to have support for a good number of websites; specifically, the websites the price aggregation application will be scraping from.
From the above, you can tell that the term “proxies for price aggregation” is not for a specific set of proxies as the sites you have interest in will determine the proxies you will make use of. The proxies that worked for my own price aggregation system might end up being detected and blocked when you try using them for your own project.
This means that what makes a proxy a price aggregation proxy is if it was able to scrape price data from the list of sites it was supposed too. Fortunately, there are a good number of proxies that are compatible with most of the websites on the Internet. These proxies can be used as price aggregation proxies.
Why Do You Need Proxies for Price Aggregation?
You might be wondering why would someone require proxies in other to build a price aggregation system. The truth nobody is telling is that almost all the price aggregation website you known makes use of proxies.
Yes, without proxies, setting up a price aggregation system of any reasonable scale won’t be possible. This is because websites do not like automated access and tend to limit the number of requests they permit per device. They keep track of this through IP tracking, and ones a device tries sending more than the acceptable number of requests, such IP will be blacklisted, and requests from it denied for a while.
With the help of proxies, you get as many IP addresses as you require to scrape the required data from the websites of interest. While exceeding request limits is the most popular reason why proxies are required for scraping based projects, there are more. For price aggregation, the idea of getting localized data also comes to play.
Many websites are increasingly making their content localized in other to appeal more to their owners and enforce some rights. They also do that in other to put into consideration discrepancies in prices between locations. With proxies, you can get access to price data, as seen by those in any location of your choice.
Best Proxies for Price Aggregation
The truth is, not all proxies can be used for price aggregation. This is because most e-commerce platforms ranging from Amazon to travel fare websites, airlines, and even railway websites are difficult to scrape. In fact, I can tell you that they are some of the most difficult nuts to crack when it comes to scraping. They can easily detect proxy through traffic.
Because of this, you have to choose your proxies wisely. Residential and mobile proxies are the best for this kind of work. However, because of the expensive nature of mobile proxies, residential proxies are the best. Below are some of the residential proxies you can use for price aggregation.
Bright Data (Formerly for Luminati)
- IP Pool Size: Over 72 million
- Locations: All countries in the world
- Concurrency Allowed: Unlimited
- Bandwidth Allowed: Starts at 1GB
- Cost: Starts at $8.4 for 1GB
Bright Data is one of the leading providers of residential proxies in the market. It prides itself as the largest proxy network as it has the largest proxy pool containing over 72 million residential IPs. One good thing about their IPs is that they are ethically sourced and 100 percent GDPR compliant.
Bright Data residential proxies have proven to be some of the best proxies for price aggregation as they are compatible with most websites on the Internet. They have support for country level, city level, and ASN geo-targeting, making them perfect getting localized price data from websites you’re gathering data from. They have many fortune 500 companies on their customer’s list.
Smartproxy
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- IP Pool Size: Over 55 million
- Locations: 195 locations across the globe
- Concurrency Allowed: Unlimited
- Bandwidth Allowed: Starts at 1GB
- Cost: Starts at $7 for 1GB
Smartproxy is another provider of residential proxies that work well for price aggregation. It proxies are premium, secure, and stealthy, just like that of Bright Data and GeoSurf. The subscription for the 3 providers is based on bandwidth. However, Smartproxy differs in its minimum monetary requirement.
You can get started with Smartproxy for $7. Smartproxy has a proxy pool containing over 55 million residential IPs distributed across 195 locations across the globe. They have high rotating proxies that change IP addresses after every request. They equally have session-based proxies that will maintain the same IP for 30 minutes.
Soax
- IP Pool Size: Over 155 million
- Locations: Supports all countries
- Concurrency Allowed: Unlimited
- Bandwidth Allowed: Starts at 15GB
- Cost: Starts at $99 for 15GB
Soax prides itself on having one of the cleanest and constantly refreshed proxy pool in the market. Their proxies are elite proxies, available in most locations around the world, 100 percent whitelisted and comes without usage limit – except your budget limits you.
All these come together to make residential proxies from Soax perfect proxies for price aggregation. With proxies from this provider, you can scrape available price data on e-commerce stores and use them to set up your own price aggregation website. Its starting price may be higher than the first two providers, but the price per GB is the cheapest.
SimplyNode
- IP Pool Size: Over 50 million
- Locations: 180 countries supported
- Concurrency Allowed: Unlimited
- Bandwidth Allowed: Starts from 1GB
- Cost: Starts from $6 per GB
SimplyNode though simply by design, has proven to be one of the best when it comes to automated website access, especially web scraping. This makes it perfect for price aggregation. With its over 50 million IP addresses, it could handle price data collection at a reasonable scale with support for collecting localized pricing in multiple currencies. Currently, all countries are supported and you can choose the specific state/city you want IPs from.
Unlike other providers, SimplyNode has a list of restricted sites including government websites, financial services, and some news sites that aren’t targets for price aggregation — making it fit for the task. Pricing for their proxies starts from $6 per GB.
Interestingly, the bandwidth allocated does not expire unless consumed. You can pay via multiple methods including card and crypto. However, if you decide to pay via crypto, then you’ll have to do a KYC, and no refund offered to those who paid via crypto.
IPRoyal
- IP Pool Size: 32 million
- Locations: 195 countries supported
- Concurrency Allowed: Unlimited
- Bandwidth Allowed: Starts from 1GB
- Cost: Starts from $7 per GB
The IPRoyal service is another residential proxy service that you can use to collect and aggregate price data from multiple websites. It features a pool with over 32 million IP addresses which is enough for most price aggregation proxy needs.
In terms of location support, IPRoyal has over 195 countries. With its geo-targeting support, you can choose the country, state, and city from which you want your IP address. The proxy by default rotates the IP address after every request. This means the web target wouldn’t know the many requests coming from your scraper are from the same device and by doing this, evade getting blocked.
However, you should switch from rotating to a sticky port for scraping that requires sessions. As with SimplyNode, IPRoyal bandwidth does not expire. This makes it great for users with irregular proxy usage patterns. Pricing for their proxies starts from $7 per GB and gets cheaper as you purchase more bandwidth.
Proxy-Seller
- IP Pool Size: 20 million
- Locations: 220 countries supported
- Concurrency Allowed: Up to 40K ports
- Bandwidth Allowed: Starts from 1GB
- Cost: Starts from $7 per GB
Originally, Proxy-seller is known for its high speed and reliable private datacenter proxies. It has recently added support for rotating residential proxy which has proven to be one of the best. Currently, it is one of the best proxies for price aggregation. It has a pool with over 20 million IP addresses sourced from over 200 countries around the globe.
This proxy is perfect for scraping and aggregating price data. Each web request you send gets a unique IP address so your requests don’t share the same IP footprint. With this, you don’t exceed the request limit per IP that would lead to a block. Their proxies have been tested on multiple e-commerce and booking websites including Amazon, AliExpress, eBay, Booking.com, and Walmart, and the success rate was over 97% percent.
Proxy-seller is built with performance in mind and scales well, allowing you to use up to 40K ports simultaneously. Pricing for their proxy starts from $7 per GB for their pay-as-you-go payment plan.
Shifter
- IP Pool Size: Over 31 million
- Locations: 130 countries
- Concurrency Allowed: Unlimited
- Cost: Starts at $125 monthly for 10 ports
Shifter backconnect residential proxies are some of the best for your price aggregation and price comparison application. Shifter is the rebranded version of Microleaves, and if you have been in the industry for long, you will know that Microleaves has come a long way. Shifter currently has a proxy pool with over 31 million IPs in it.
Unlike the ones above, proxies from Shifter come with unlimited bandwidth usage – they are priced based on ports, and each port gets a new IP assigned to it after every 5 minutes. Their IPs are from real broadband digital cables. They have good location coverage too.
GeoSurf (Closed!)
- IP Pool Size: Over 2.5 million
- Locations: 130 countries
- Concurrency Allowed: Unlimited
- Bandwidth Allowed: Starts at 38GB
- Cost: Starts at $450 monthly for 38GB
With residential proxies from GeoSurf, you can crawl and scrape any website on the Internet without the fear of being detected and blocked. GeoSurf is in the league of Bright Data and can be said to be very secure, reliable, fast, and compatible with most websites. GeoSurf proxies can be used for price aggregation because of their undetectable and stealth nature.
It has a good session control system that will help you maintain a session for either 1 minute, 10 minutes, or 30 minutes. If what you require are high rotating proxies, which are even the best for price aggregation, you can also get them from GeoSurf.
FAQs about Proxies for Price Aggregation
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Must I Use Proxies for Price Aggregation?
Price aggregation is a form of web scraping as it deals with extracting price data from web pages. Without proxies, web scraping won’t be possible at any reasonable scale. If the website you wish to pull price information from provides you an API, you wouldn’t need proxies. Unfortunately, most websites do not provide an API and frown at automated access for the purpose of data extraction. Because of this, you need proxies to get your requests to mimic coming from different devices.
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Is Price Aggregation Illegal?
Price aggregation is completely legal even though websites you crawl for price data would want to term it illegal. The question should be a question of morality, not legality. For some price aggregation websites such as Google Shopping requires you to add your site before they crawl. These ones are morally concerned. The ones that do so carel ess about morality.
Related,
- Shopping and Selling on eBay with Proxies to Avoid Bans
- The Best Travel Fare Aggregation Proxy Provider
- Ultimate Guide to Scraping Craigslist Data with Software
Conclusion
Price aggregation for the sake of price comparison makes the whole process of price research before making a purchase decision easy for online shoppers. Proxies are the backbone of price aggregation websites. If you intend to build a price aggregation website, you can choose one of the above residential proxy providers.
