France proxies
Two things decide what to buy for France. Large retail and the classifieds platforms filter hosting ranges, so those targets want residential, while publishers and public sector sites serve a datacenter address normally and cost an order of magnitude less. And Marseille is not just another city on the list: submarine cables to Africa and Asia land there, so datacenter addresses in Marseille route differently from Paris ones.
What we have in France
All four types are available. Prices are the same as in every other country we cover.
French retail, local search results, ad verification
Accounts and long sessions on one address
Volume collection, routes through Paris and Marseille
Platforms that expect a carrier address
What French addresses get used for
Retail price monitoring
Cdiscount, Fnac, Darty, Carrefour, La Redoute, Amazon.fr, Leroy Merlin: prices and stock shown to a French shopper differ from what appears elsewhere.
Classifieds and second-hand
Leboncoin holds a position in France with no equivalent next door: a large share of second-hand trade runs through it.
Local search and SEO
google.fr, the local map pack and paid placements. French results are their own set and Belgium does not substitute.
Ad verification
Le Monde, Le Figaro, L’Équipe, 20 Minutes, BFMTV: a campaign bought for a French audience renders only for one.
What looks different from outside France
These serve a French 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 French job
Addresses in French datacenters, traffic unmetered.
Volume collection, APIs, targets that ignore address class
Home connection addresses, billed per gigabyte, rotating by default.
Retail pricing, google.fr results, ad checks
Consumer registration on datacenter hardware. Static and dedicated for the term.
Accounts, long sessions, anything that must not change address
A carrier address behind NAT, shared with real subscribers.
Social platforms and apps that expect a phone
Cities people ask for here
Cities are set with the _city_ suffix and available while devices in them are online. Paris is denser than the rest put together.
The setups people take here most often
- 01Rotating residential, country levelPrice and search collection: a new exit per connection, city rarely needed.
- 02Static ISP, ParisAccounts and ad verification: the address holds for the term.
- 03Datacenter, ParisVolume jobs, the cheapest traffic we sell.
- 04Datacenter, MarseilleWhen routes toward Africa and the Middle East are what matters.
Connection strings for France
The country code is FR, upper case. The city goes after it with _city_, hyphens instead of spaces, in the order country, city, session, lifetime.
French static addresses take no suffixes: the host is the IP from your dashboard, port 50100, SOCKS5 on 50101.
French exits, four ways
curl -x login_c_FR:password@proxy.sotaproxy.com:10000 https://api.ipify.org
# Paris, held for fifteen minutes on session 42
curl -x login_c_FR_city_Paris_s_42_ttl_15m:password@proxy.sotaproxy.com:10000 https://api.ipify.org
# a French static address: no suffixes
curl -x login:password@YOUR-FR-IP:50100 https://api.ipify.org
# SOCKS5 with remote DNS so the lookup is French too
curl -x socks5h://login_c_FR:password@proxy.sotaproxy.com:10000 https://api.ipify.orgConsent walls are stricter here than next door
The French data protection regulator is known for enforcing informed consent rules actively, and that shows up in how French sites are built.
In practice you hit a banner that hides the content until it is clicked more often than in neighbouring countries, and you more frequently meet designs where refusing takes a separate action. A scraper that does not handle the banner captures a page with no data and reports success, which is the worst kind of failure: the logs look fine and the table is empty.
Two approaches work. Either handle the banner in a browser and keep the consent cookie on the profile so you are not clicking it on every load, or find the API the page itself calls and take the data from there, skipping the markup entirely.
Marseille, and why it is not simply the second city
On most country pages the cities differ only in whose local results you see. Marseille differs technically.
Submarine cables connecting Europe with North Africa, the Middle East and Asia land there, and it has grown into a significant node on that path. For data collection that means routes from Marseille toward those regions are shorter than routes from Paris or Frankfurt.
If your targets are French, Paris and Marseille make no difference to you: both give a French address and French content. If you run infrastructure working toward the Mediterranean and beyond, a datacenter address in Marseille can be the better choice for purely network reasons.
What actually blocks you on French targets
The split here is the same shape as in Germany but the strict end is stricter, because French sites lean harder on consent gating and bot scoring.
Large retail and classifieds filter hosting ranges and will hand a datacenter address a 403 or a challenge page on the first request. Residential is what works, and a sticky session helps because these sites frequently gate content behind an interaction.
Publishers and public sector sites are usually reachable from datacenter, which is worth knowing before paying per gigabyte for them.
Search results are reachable but rate limited per address. More addresses, not a different type.
Test each domain with one datacenter address first. The ten minutes it costs regularly moves a French job onto the cheaper product.
Which exits you get here, and how stable they are
The French pool in practical terms.
Residential density concentrates in Paris and the Île-de-France by a wide margin, with Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse and Lille following. City requests outside those fail more often, so keep a country-level fallback.
Marseille is the one city here where the choice is technical rather than editorial: submarine cables toward Africa and Asia land there, so datacenter addresses in Marseille route differently from Paris ones. For French content it makes no difference.
Sticky lifetimes behave normally, and French home connections are stable, so a session that ends early is more likely a device going offline than anything about the route.
Choosing the type for a French target
Run it in this order. Ten minutes here replaces a month of guessing.
- Start on datacenter. If the target serves you normally, stop: unmetered traffic at $1.15 per address per month beats everything else for volume.
- A 403 on the first request means hosting ranges are filtered. Move that domain to residential and leave the rest where they are.
- A 429 after many requests is a per-address rate limit. It wants more addresses, not a different type.
- Anything that logs into an account and stays there belongs on ISP: static, dedicated, French consumer registration.
- Take mobile only where the platform expects carrier traffic. At $5.76 a day it is the most expensive way to hold a French address.
What French sites check beyond the address
A French address opens the first gate. Two other signals decide most of what follows.
The first is language. Send fr-FR in Accept-Language, because plenty of French sites will serve English to a visitor who does not ask for French, and your collection then holds a version no local shopper sees. On retail this shows up most on product descriptions and delivery blocks.
The second is the timezone. The mainland runs on Europe/Paris with daylight saving, and an antidetect profile on a French address reporting another zone contradicts itself in one line of JavaScript.
Both are cheap to get right and both are checked before anything more sophisticated. Getting them wrong is the most common reason a French setup underperforms while the address itself is fine.
What a month of French work costs
Three scenarios at our prices, so you have something to check a quote against.
- Price monitoring across French retail, 50,000 product pages a day with images blocked, roughly 80 KB per page. That is 4 GB a day, about 120 GB a month: $120 on residential. If the retailers do not filter hosting ranges, ten datacenter addresses do the same for $13.50.
- Tracking second-hand listings, 20,000 pages a day: about 48 GB a month, so $48 on residential.
- Twenty French accounts on ISP addresses at $2.10 each on the volume tier: $42 a month, with no traffic billing at all.
The legal part, stated plainly
France applies the GDPR, with supervision by the national data protection regulator. Collecting data that identifies people brings you under that regime regardless of where your company sits, and a French address changes none of it.
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 French exit
Under a minute, and it catches the two most common failures: a city suffix that did not parse and a sticky session that is actually rotating.
Three checks
# 1. is the exit French, and in which city
curl -x login_c_FR_city_Paris:password@proxy.sotaproxy.com:10000 https://ipinfo.io/json
# 2. does the sticky session hold
for i in 1 2 3; do
curl -s -x login_c_FR_s_42_ttl_15m:password@proxy.sotaproxy.com:10000 https://api.ipify.org; echo
done
# 3. does DNS resolve on our side
curl -x socks5h://login_c_FR:password@proxy.sotaproxy.com:10000 https://api.ipify.orgQuestions people ask before buying French addresses
Are all four types available in France?
Yes. Residential, ISP, datacenter and mobile are all there.
Paris or Marseille?
For French content it makes no difference, both give a French address. Marseille is worth it when routes toward Africa, the Middle East and Asia are what matter.
Datacenter or residential for French sites?
Depends on the domain. Large retail and classifieds refuse hosting ranges and want residential. Publishers and public sector sites serve datacenter normally, at a fraction of the cost. Test each domain once before deciding.
Why does the page come back empty?
Usually a consent banner hiding the content. Handle it in a browser and keep the cookie on the profile, or take the data from the API the page calls.
Do French addresses cost more?
No. Prices are the same everywhere: residential from $1.00 per GB, datacenter from $1.15 per address per month, ISP from $1.90, mobile from $5.76 per day.
Why is the site serving me English?
Because you did not send fr-FR in Accept-Language. The address sets the country; the page language is often chosen from the header.