Proxy for Amazon
Amazon is the sharpest version of a problem that appears all over this site. Its robots file leaves product pages and search open to crawlers. Its Conditions of Use name the collection of listings, descriptions and prices as something the licence does not cover. Neither document is hiding, and they point different ways.
What Amazon says, and what it counts
- Its robots.txt is narrower than people assume. The wildcard section runs to 135 rules, blocking things like the cart, sign-in flows and a handful of product sub-paths, while product pages under /dp/, search and bestseller listings are not disallowed there. The file as a whole carries 218 disallow rules across 100 named agents.
- Its Conditions of Use are the opposite of narrow. The licence you are granted is to make personal and non-commercial use of the service, and it explicitly does not extend to any collection and use of product listings, descriptions or prices, nor to any use of data mining, robots or similar gathering and extraction tools.
- Its Selling Partner API counts against a selling partner and application pair, not an address. Exceeding a plan returns 429, which is retryable. Nothing in that documentation mentions an IP.
- Its Product Advertising API has moved on. PA-API 5 is deprecated in favour of the Creators API, and applications still calling it are answered with HTTP 403 and an access denied error telling them to migrate. If your plan assumed PA-API as the official route, it is already broken.
Which of our products fits which Amazon job
Two of these are ordinary and uncontroversial. The third is the one most people come for, and it carries a caveat we are not going to bury.
| What you are doing | What we would use | Why that one |
|---|---|---|
| Running a Seller Central account | ISP, one fixed address | A seller account holds inventory, payouts and a performance history. It wants an address that does not move, for the same reason an ad account does. |
| An SP-API integration for your own data | Datacenter IPv4, or nothing | Your server calls Amazon and the plan is tied to your selling partner and application. Buy a cheap fixed address only if something on your side needs one. |
| Checking how a listing looks in another country | Residential in that country | Prices, availability and the buy box differ by marketplace and by where the shopper is. Occasional checks cost almost nothing by the gigabyte. |
| Price and competitor monitoring at volume | Residential, rotating, after you have read the licence | This is the largest order on the page and the one where the Conditions of Use are most specific. Read the clause below, take advice if the stakes justify it, and decide deliberately. |
We are not going to tell you that robots.txt settles this. A crawl file and a contract are different instruments, and on Amazon they say different things about the same pages. Anyone spending real money on collection here should have read both before the first invoice, not after.
Setting it up
Amazon has no proxy setting. The proxy goes into the browser profile holding a seller account, or into the client doing the collecting.
# Browser profile for a Seller Central account, on a fixed address:
Type SOCKS5
Host 198.51.100.20
Port 50100
# Checking a listing as a shopper in Germany would see it:
curl -x socks5://login_c_DE:password@proxy.sotaproxy.com:10000 \
https://www.amazon.de/dp/EXAMPLE
# An SP-API client through one predictable outbound address:
export HTTPS_PROXY="http://login:password@198.51.100.20:50100"- Keep a seller account on one address and one country. Moving it is the same mistake it is on any platform holding money.
- For geo checks, match the marketplace to the country. Looking at amazon.de from a United States exit tells you less than you think.
- Rotation spreads request load, it does not change what the licence says. Those are separate questions and only one of them is technical.
- If you are building on SP-API, a proxy will not move your usage plan. The plan follows the selling partner and application pair.
What to buy for Amazon
Prices are entry prices and fall with volume. Read the note under the table before the largest of these.
Residential proxies
from $2.00 per GB, 220+ countries
For seeing a marketplace the way a shopper there sees it, and for collection if you have decided to do it.
- Household addresses in more countries than anything else we sell, which matters when marketplaces are national
- A new exit per connection spreads request load
- Billed by traffic, so an occasional geo check costs pennies
- A session ends when the household device drops, one hour at most
- Changes nothing about the Conditions of Use, which are the part that actually constrains collection here
ISP proxies
from $2.30 per IP per month, 24 countries
For a Seller Central account that should sign in from the same place every day.
- Fixed for the whole term and registered to a consumer provider
- Traffic is not metered, which suits a console left open
- Cheap enough per month that stability costs almost nothing
- 24 countries
- Does nothing for collection, and nothing for a seller performance problem
Datacenter IPv4
from $1.50 per IP per month, 41 countries
For an SP-API client that needs one predictable outbound address.
- The cheapest stable address we sell
- Traffic is not metered
- 41 countries
- Recognisable as a datacenter, so it is the wrong choice under a seller login
- Moves no usage plan, because plans follow the selling partner and application
The single most popular reason people buy Amazon proxies is price monitoring, and it is the exact activity the licence names. We have put the clause on this page rather than in the small print because you should make that decision with it in front of you.
Where people go wrong
Treating robots.txt as permission
The crawl file leaves product pages open and the Conditions of Use exclude collecting listings and prices from your licence. Reading only the first one is how a project gets built on a misunderstanding.
Planning around PA-API
PA-API 5 is deprecated and applications calling it now receive a 403 telling them to migrate to the Creators API. Any plan that treats it as the safe official route needs revisiting.
Buying proxies to lift an SP-API plan
Usage plans are tied to the selling partner and application pair and answer 429 when exceeded. No address is part of that.
Putting a seller account on a datacenter address
It is the cheapest option and the wrong signal on the one account you cannot afford to have reviewed.
What a proxy will not do here
It will not change the licence you accepted, it will not restore a suspended seller account, it will not raise an SP-API usage plan, and it will not bring back PA-API. What it does is give a seller account a stable place to sign in from, let you see a national marketplace from inside that country, and spread the load of whatever collection you have decided to run. On this platform, more than most, the limiting factor is a contract rather than a network, and we would rather you knew that before you bought than after.
Questions people actually type
Is scraping Amazon allowed?
Their Conditions of Use grant a licence for personal and non-commercial use and say it does not include any collection and use of product listings, descriptions or prices, nor any use of data mining, robots or similar tools. Separately, their robots.txt does not disallow product pages or search. Those two facts sit side by side, we are not going to pretend otherwise, and the decision is yours rather than ours.
Does Amazon block proxies?
It classifies traffic rather than hunting proxies as such, and datacenter ranges attract more friction than household ones. But the reason people hit walls at volume is usually request patterns rather than address type, and neither is the constraint that matters most here.
Which proxy is best for Amazon price monitoring?
Rotating residential, in the countries whose marketplaces you care about, because prices and availability are national. Before you size the order, read the licence clause quoted above.
Do proxies help with SP-API rate limits?
No. Usage plans are tied to the selling partner and application pair, and exceeding one returns a retryable 429. Addresses do not appear in that documentation at all.
Can I still use the Product Advertising API?
PA-API 5 is deprecated in favour of the Creators API, and applications still calling it are answered with a 403 and an access denied error pointing at the migration. Check your own integration before assuming it still works.
Which proxy for a Seller Central account?
ISP, one fixed address, in the country the account operates from. The account carries inventory and payouts, so the address should be as uninteresting and unchanging as possible.
Where the claims above come from
Four primary documents. The first two contradict each other about the same pages, which is exactly why both are here.
- Amazon Conditions of UseThe licence and access section. It grants a limited licence for personal and non-commercial use, and states that this does not include any collection and use of product listings, descriptions or prices, nor any use of data mining, robots or similar data gathering and extraction tools. This is the clause that decides the economics of collection here.
- Amazon robots.txt218 disallow rules across 100 named agents, of which 135 apply to the general wildcard. Product pages under /dp/, search and bestseller listings are not among them. Read next to the Conditions of Use and the tension is plain.
- Amazon, Selling Partner API usage plans and rate limitsRate limits are applied per selling partner and application pair, and exceeding a plan returns a retryable 429. No mention of addresses anywhere, which is worth knowing before anyone sells you throughput for an SP-API integration.
- Amazon, PA-API 5 deprecation noticePA-API 5 is deprecated in favour of the Creators API, and applications still calling it receive HTTP 403 with an access denied error directing them to migrate. Relevant to anyone whose plan still assumes PA-API is the official way in.