Datacenter proxies with Puppeteer

Chrome takes the proxy address as a launch flag, and Puppeteer supplies the credentials. This page uses the datacenter tier: a US datacenter IP that changes for every new connection.

What you need

• Your proxy API key, from the Proxies page in the portal.
• npm install puppeteer (or puppeteer-core with your own Chrome).

export PB_PROXY_KEY="YOUR_KEY"

Launch a browser through the proxy

import puppeteer from "puppeteer";

const browser = await puppeteer.launch({
  args: ["--proxy-server=http://proxy.privatebyte.com:3128"],
});

const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.authenticate({
  username: process.env.PB_PROXY_KEY,
  password: "datacenter",
});

await page.goto("https://api.ipify.org");
console.log(await page.evaluate(() => document.body.innerText)); // a US datacenter address

await browser.close();

Call page.authenticate() before the first goto(). The flag sets where the proxy is, and authenticate() answers its login prompt.

Get a new IP

One browser keeps its connections open, so every page in it leaves from the same address. Create a new browser context to get a new one:

for (let i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
  const context = await browser.createBrowserContext();
  const page = await context.newPage();
  await page.authenticate({
    username: process.env.PB_PROXY_KEY,
    password: "datacenter",
  });
  await page.goto("https://api.ipify.org");
  console.log(await page.evaluate(() => document.body.innerText));
  await context.close();
}

Authenticate each new page, because a new context starts clean. In older Puppeteer versions the method is createIncognitoBrowserContext().

Know the limits

• The datacenter tier is US only and has no sessions. A site that checks the reputation of an address may block it. If you see 403 or a challenge page, use a residential tier such as standard.
• Chrome remembers proxy logins for an address until it restarts. Keep the password the same within one browser run.

Errors

What you see	What it means
ERR_TUNNEL_CONNECTION_FAILED with a 407	The API key is wrong or missing.
ERR_TUNNEL_CONNECTION_FAILED with a 400	The password asked for something this tier does not do: a country other than US, a session or a TTL.
A page returns 403	The site is refusing datacenter addresses.
A 400 that names an unknown tier	The tier word is a close misspelling of a real tier, such as datacentre. Fix the spelling. A password that is not close to any tier, such as x, uses your account's default tier.

Related

• Datacenter proxies with Playwright
• Proxy connection format and tiers
• Datacenter proxies