Portugal proxies
Portugal has a complication no other European country in our coverage has: its language is also spoken by a country of two hundred million people on another continent. A Portuguese address opens the first gate, but which version of a site you get is decided by the language header rather than the address, and getting it wrong means collecting Brazilian data while being confident it is Portuguese.
What we have in Portugal
Prices are the same as in every other country we cover.
What Portuguese addresses get used for
Retail price monitoring
Worten, Fnac.pt, Continente, Amazon.pt: Portuguese storefronts differ from the Spanish ones even where the chain is the same.
Classifieds and second-hand
OLX Portugal, CustoJusto, Standvirtual for cars, Idealista.pt and Imovirtual for property.
Local search and SEO
google.pt: Portuguese results are their own set, separate from both the Spanish and the Brazilian ones, and each is only visible from inside.
Ad verification
Público, Expresso, Observador, Correio da Manhã: campaigns bought for Portugal do not render for a foreign address.
What looks different from outside Portugal
These serve a Portuguese visitor something other than what a foreign one sees, because of broadcast rights and local catalogues. We sell addresses rather than a way past detection.
Which type to take for a Portuguese job
Home connection addresses, billed per gigabyte, rotating by default.
Retail, classifieds, search results, ad checks
A carrier address behind NAT, shared with real subscribers.
Apps and platforms that expect a phone
Addresses in Portuguese datacenters, traffic unmetered.
Volume collection where the target ignores address class
Cities people ask for here
Cities are set with the _city_ suffix. The mainland carries the pool; the islands are requested far less often and do not always resolve.
The setups people take here most often
- 01Residential, country levelThe default for retail and search, with a pt-PT header on every request.
- 02Residential, Lisbon or PortoWhen you are comparing north against south and the city genuinely matters.
- 03Datacenter, LisbonVolume collection where the target is neutral.
- 04Mobile addressApps and platforms expecting a carrier.
Connection strings for Portugal
The country code is PT, upper case. The city goes after it with _city_, hyphens instead of spaces, in the order country, city, session, lifetime.
Portuguese static addresses take no suffixes: the host is the IP from your dashboard, port 50100, SOCKS5 on 50101.
Portuguese exits, four ways
curl -x login_c_PT:[email protected]:10000 https://api.ipify.org
# held for fifteen minutes on session 42
curl -x login_c_PT_s_42_ttl_15m:[email protected]:10000 https://api.ipify.org
# Porto, with the language header that decides the content
curl -H "Accept-Language: pt-PT" -x login_c_PT_city_Porto_s_43_ttl_15m:[email protected]:10000 https://api.ipify.org
# a Portuguese static address: no suffixes
curl -x login:password@YOUR-PT-IP:50100 https://api.ipify.orgPortuguese is two different languages to a website
The main trap in this country, and it has nothing to do with the address.
The larger platforms that operate in both Portugal and Brazil keep two versions of their content and pick between them on the Accept-Language header. A Portuguese address sending pt-BR, or just pt, gets you the Brazilian version: different wording, different range, sometimes different prices and a different currency.
The worst part is that the mistake looks like a success. Status 200, the page is in Portuguese, the fields parse, the rows land in your table. It usually surfaces a week later, when the numbers disagree with what a person in Lisbon sees.
One rule covers it: send pt-PT explicitly on every Portuguese request, and add a Brazilian marker check to your intake. Looking for the Brazilian currency symbol or the word Brasil in the delivery block is enough; if either appears you landed in the wrong place, and the address is not the reason.
The reverse holds too: if Brazil is what you actually want, take a Brazilian address and pt-BR rather than a Portuguese address with a Brazilian header.
Iberia is a buying convenience, not a country
The second trap, and it shows up in ad verification.
Advertising is often bought for Iberia as a whole, so Portugal and Spain arrive in reports as one line. On the serving side they are two countries: some creatives run only to a Portuguese audience, some only to a Spanish one, and some to both but with different landing pages.
A Spanish address does not prove a Portuguese placement. Checking a campaign bought across Iberia takes both addresses and two passes, rather than the Spanish one because it is nearer and cheaper. It is not cheaper: the price is identical.
The same applies to retail. Chains with stores in both countries maintain separate catalogues, and the price of an identical item diverges between Portugal and Spain routinely.
What actually blocks you on Portuguese targets
The familiar Western European split.
Retail chains and classifieds platforms filter hosting ranges: expect a 403 from datacenter and plan for residential.
Publishers and government sites serve datacenter addresses normally.
Apps and the platforms grown out of them sometimes expect a carrier address: that is where mobile helps.
Search results are reachable but rate limited per address: more addresses rather than a different type.
Which exits you get here, and how stable they are
The Portuguese pool in practical terms.
The pool is small by European standards: this is a country of ten million people and the size shows. It is enough for monitoring and ad checks, and tight for anything needing thousands of concurrent addresses.
Line quality is even, home connectivity here is good, and response times from Europe are predictable.
The pool is mainland. Madeira and the Azores are requested rarely and do not always resolve: keep a country-level fallback and log when it fires.
Sticky sessions behave normally, and mobile rotates by physical reconnect: seconds rather than milliseconds, and the same address sometimes comes back.
Choosing the type for a Portuguese target
The usual order.
- Start with a Portuguese datacenter address: $1.15 per address per month.
- A 403 on the first request means hosting ranges are filtered. Move to country-level residential.
- If the target is an app and residential runs into a check, try a mobile address.
- A 429 after many requests is a per-address rate limit: more addresses, not a different type.
- Ask for a city only when you are comparing regions. Otherwise country level is more reliable.
What Portuguese sites check beyond the address
The language header is covered above; here is the rest.
The country has three time zones. The mainland and Madeira run on UTC+0 in winter and UTC+1 in summer, and the Azores sit an hour behind. Configure the profile from the city: a Lisbon address reporting Azores time is an hour out.
The currency is the euro, but the separators are Portuguese: a comma for decimals and a dot for thousands. A parser written for the English format turns 1.299,90 into nonsense.
Consent banners are mandatory here and cover the content. A scraper that does not handle them captures an empty page under a successful status code.
What a month of Portuguese work costs
Three scenarios at our prices, so you have something to check a quote against.
- Price monitoring across Portuguese retail, 25,000 listings a day with images blocked, roughly 110 KB per page. That is about 2.75 GB a day, around 82 GB a month: $82 on residential.
- Verifying an Iberian campaign in two passes, Portuguese and Spanish, doubles the traffic but not the per-gigabyte price, which is the same everywhere.
- If the targets are neutral, the same collection on ten datacenter addresses costs $13.50 a month.
The legal part, stated plainly
Portugal is in the European Union, so GDPR applies here with everything that follows for collecting personal data. A Portuguese address neither puts you under it nor takes you out: what matters is whose data you collect, not where the traffic exits.
This is general information rather than legal advice. Our terms require lawful use and we act on abuse reports. Where the answer carries commercial risk, ask a lawyer.
Verifying a Portuguese exit
Under a minute. The second command matters more than the first here: it shows which language version you are being served.
Three checks
# 1. is the exit Portuguese, and where
curl -s -x login_c_PT:[email protected]:10000 https://ipinfo.io/json
# 2. which Portuguese are you being served
curl -s -H "Accept-Language: pt-PT" -x login_c_PT:[email protected]:10000 https://your-target.pt/ | grep -ciE "brasil|R\$"
# anything above zero means you got the Brazilian version
# 3. does the sticky session hold
for i in 1 2 3; do
curl -s -x login_c_PT_s_42_ttl_15m:[email protected]:10000 https://api.ipify.org; echo
doneQuestions people ask before buying Portuguese addresses
Why do I get Brazilian content from a Portuguese address?
Because the version is chosen by the Accept-Language header rather than the address. Send pt-PT explicitly and check the response body for Brazilian markers.
Will a Spanish address do for Portugal?
No. On the serving side these are two countries: separate catalogues, separate prices, separate ad campaigns. The address costs the same either way, so there is nothing to save.
Do I need city targeting?
Only when comparing regions. Country level is more reliable, and the islands do not always resolve.
How large is the Portuguese pool?
Small by European standards: a country of ten million people. Fine for monitoring and ad checks, tight for thousands of concurrent addresses.
Do Portuguese addresses cost more?
No. Prices are the same everywhere: residential from $1.00 per GB, datacenter from $1.15 per address per month, mobile from $5.76 per day.
Which timezone should the profile use?
The city one: the mainland and Madeira run UTC+0 in winter and UTC+1 in summer, and the Azores sit an hour behind.