Belgium proxies
On most pages in this section we advise against asking for a city. Belgium is the exception. Language here follows geography: the north speaks Dutch, the south French, and advertising and search results are split by region rather than by country. Antwerp and Liège are two different audiences inside one market.
What we have in Belgium
Prices are the same as in every other country we cover.
What Belgian addresses get used for
Regional ad verification
HLN and VRT in the north, Le Soir and RTBF in the south: campaigns are bought per language audience, and one address shows you half of them.
Retail price monitoring
Bol, Coolblue, Colruyt, Delhaize, Krëfel: Belgian storefronts are separate from the Dutch and French ones.
Classifieds and second-hand
2dehands and 2ememain are one platform under two names, one per language.
Local search and SEO
google.be returns different results for a Dutch and a French query, and you need both sets.
What looks different from outside Belgium
These serve a Belgian 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 Belgian job
Home connection addresses, billed per gigabyte, rotating by default. A sticky session holds one address for up to fifty minutes.
Retail, classifieds, search results, regional ad checks
Addresses in Belgian datacenters, traffic unmetered.
Volume collection where the target ignores address class
Cities people ask for here
Cities are set with the _city_ suffix, and here that is not a formality: the city decides the language region, and therefore what you are shown.
The setups people take here most often
- 01Antwerp plus LiègeThe base pair for regional checks: north and south from two addresses.
- 02Residential, country levelWhen the region does not matter and you just need a Belgian address.
- 03A fifty minute sticky sessionWhen a job has to run start to finish on one address.
- 04Datacenter for neutral targetsPublishers and reference sites are served normally.
Connection strings for Belgium
The country code is BE, upper case. The city goes after it with _city_, hyphens instead of spaces, in the order country, city, session, lifetime.
Belgian static addresses take no suffixes: the host is the IP from your dashboard, port 50100, SOCKS5 on 50101.
Belgian exits, four ways
# the Dutch-speaking north
curl -H "Accept-Language: nl-BE" -x login_c_BE_city_Antwerp_s_42_ttl_15m:password@proxy.sotaproxy.com:10000 https://api.ipify.org
# the French-speaking south
curl -H "Accept-Language: fr-BE" -x login_c_BE_city_Liege_s_43_ttl_15m:password@proxy.sotaproxy.com:10000 https://api.ipify.org
# country level, when the region does not matter
curl -x login_c_BE:password@proxy.sotaproxy.com:10000 https://api.ipify.org
# a Belgian static address: no suffixes
curl -x login:password@YOUR-BE-IP:50100 https://api.ipify.orgThe one country where the city decides
Almost everywhere in this section we advise asking for the country rather than a city. Here it is the other way round, and the reason is the market rather than the pool.
Language in Belgium follows territory. The north speaks Dutch, the south French, there is a small German-speaking community in the east, and Brussels is officially bilingual. This is not a domestic detail: advertising is bought per language audience, and each side has its own publishers.
The consequence for collection is direct. A country-level address takes you wherever it takes you, and you get one of two pictures without knowing which. For ad verification that makes the result meaningless: half the campaigns simply will not render.
The working configuration is a pair of cities. Antwerp or Ghent as the northern point, Liège or Charleroi as the southern one, and Brussels separately if you need the bilingual capital. Three passes instead of one, with a clear attribution each time.
The same applies to search. A Dutch query and a French one return different results and different ad blocks, and each has to be collected from an address in the matching region.
Two language markets with everything else held constant
The second reason people come here deliberately, rather than because they need the Belgian market itself.
Comparing a French-speaking and a Dutch-speaking audience normally means comparing France with the Netherlands: two countries with different logistics, different chains, different regulation and different advertising habits. Too many variables to conclude anything about the message itself.
Belgium removes nearly all of them. One country, one currency, one legal regime, the same retail chains, often the same platform under two names. What actually changes is the language of the audience.
So people come here to find out how one creative or one landing page performs in two languages. It is cheaper and cleaner than running the experiment across two countries.
In practice it is the same setup: two addresses, two language headers, one target, and differences that cannot be blamed on the country.
What actually blocks you on Belgian 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.
Search results are reachable but rate limited per address: more addresses rather than a different type.
One Belgian subtlety: a mismatch between region and language stands out more than it would elsewhere. A French header from an Antwerp address is a combination an ordinary user almost never produces.
Which exits you get here, and how stable they are
The Belgian pool in practical terms.
The pool is good for a country of eleven million: population density is high, home connectivity is widespread, and there are enough addresses for regular work.
What matters most here is that the regional distribution is real. Cities in Flanders and Wallonia resolve reliably rather than falling over the way a second or third city does in small countries. That is exactly what makes the regional scheme workable.
Line quality is excellent and response times from Europe are among the best in our coverage.
Sticky sessions hold an address for up to fifty minutes: when a job has to run on one address from start to finish, that is the tool here.
Choosing the type for a Belgian target
A short order, but it starts with the question of region.
- First decide whether the language of the audience matters. If it does, you are working with cities rather than the country.
- For publishers and reference sites take a datacenter address: $1.15 per address per month.
- For retail, classifieds and search results you need residential. Set the region with the city and the language with the header, and keep them consistent.
- If the job has to run on one address, add a sticky session with a lifetime.
- A 429 after many requests is a per-address rate limit: more addresses, not a different type.
What Belgian sites check beyond the address
A Belgian address opens the first gate; consistency between language and region decides the rest.
Send nl-BE or fr-BE rather than nl-NL or fr-FR. Belgian versions of sites are separate from the Dutch and French ones, and platforms distinguish them by that code.
Then a trap that exists nowhere else: the number format on the same site changes with the language. In the Dutch version a price reads 1.299,90 €, in the French one 1 299,90 €. Parsing written for one version quietly produces nonsense on the other.
The time zone is CET, shifting in summer, and it is the same across the country.
Consent banners are mandatory and cover the content: a scraper that does not handle them captures an empty page under a successful status code.
What a month of Belgian work costs
Three scenarios at our prices, so you have something to check a quote against.
- Price monitoring across Belgian retail, 20,000 listings a day with images blocked, roughly 110 KB per page. That is about 2.2 GB a day, around 66 GB a month: $66 on residential.
- Regional ad verification from two points, north and south, costs twice that: about $132 a month. That is the price of not reporting on half the campaigns.
- If the targets are neutral, the same collection on ten datacenter addresses costs $13.50 a month.
The legal part, stated plainly
Belgium is in the European Union, so GDPR applies here with everything that follows for collecting personal data. A Belgian 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 Belgian exit
Under a minute. The second command is the main one here: it checks that north and south are giving you different regions rather than the same one.
Three checks
# 1. is the exit Belgian, and where
curl -s -x login_c_BE:password@proxy.sotaproxy.com:10000 https://ipinfo.io/json
# 2. do the two cities land in different regions
curl -s -x login_c_BE_city_Antwerp:password@proxy.sotaproxy.com:10000 https://ipinfo.io/json | grep -i region
curl -s -x login_c_BE_city_Liege:password@proxy.sotaproxy.com:10000 https://ipinfo.io/json | grep -i region
# 3. does the fifty minute session hold
for i in 1 2 3; do
curl -s -x login_c_BE_s_42_ttl_50m:password@proxy.sotaproxy.com:10000 https://api.ipify.org; echo
doneQuestions people ask before buying Belgian addresses
Why does this page recommend city targeting?
Because language follows region. A country-level address gives you one of two pictures without telling you which, and for ad verification that makes the result useless.
Which cities should I take?
Antwerp or Ghent as the northern point, Liège or Charleroi as the southern one, and Brussels separately if you need the bilingual capital.
Will a Dutch or French address do?
No. Belgian versions of sites are separate, and platforms distinguish nl-BE and fr-BE from nl-NL and fr-FR.
Why does my parser break on the second language version?
The number format changes with the language: 1.299,90 € in the Dutch version and 1 299,90 € in the French one, on the same site.
Can I compare two languages inside one country?
That is exactly why people come here. Currency, law, logistics and chains are the same, so differences cannot be blamed on the country.
Do Belgian addresses cost more?
No. Prices are the same everywhere: residential from $1.00 per GB, datacenter from $1.15 per address per month.